Monthly Archives: July 2024

Best of List

Top 20 Boardgames of all time 2023-2024 Edition

It’s been a while since I updated my best-of-all-time list, so today we remedy that situation. I have been looking forward to making this list this year, but as is always the case, the choices where hard and it took almost as much time to decide as it took to write the article. Here we go!

20. Underwater Cities

A new addition to my list, this is a game that had an immediate impact on me the first time I played it and I think it has a lot to do with the fact that I just saw, from the get-go, all the amazing possibilities and I couldn’t wait to start exploring it.

It might be infatuation, games usually enter my list that way and it’s only through many follow-up plays that I will determine as to whether or not a game is worthy to remain on the list. That said, I think it’s looking pretty good for this one.

This little Euro about building cities underwater has a lot in common with many other long-time classics on this list. It’s a tight little worker placement and resource management game with that simple design, but that deep gameplay combination that makes so many of my favorite Euros grace our tables on repeat. I’m looking forward to seeing if the hype holds up long-term. Could it be a challenger worthy of comparison to Terraforming Mars? Maybe with some expansion, for now, it’s got novelty on its side and that is good enough for me.

The brilliant part with Underwater Cities is that it managed a little magic trick very few Euros pull of which is that at its core all mechanics of this game are critical to winning. You can’t ignore or disregard any part of it, do so and you WILL lose. Everything on the board is part of your strategy, it all matters and I love that. So many games have key mechanics that are essentially pointless or victory point areas that simply don’t matter which is both a trap for inexperienced players and a boring element of the game that goes mostly unused. Few games manage to avoid such pitfalls but Underwater Cities ensures that everything included really matters.

More than that, Underwater Cities makes sure that every card in the game serves a purpose within some strategy, there are no useless cards you never play which is so common with card-driven games as well. I’m reminded of Terraforming Mars which has cards that are simply dead draws that you never use.

Great game with tons of potential.

19. Tapestry

Tapestry is something of a staple game in my group’s consciousness, but it rose and fell off our radar over time. We don’t play it often but every time it does come out, we are all reminded of its brilliant yet rather odd mixture of complexity merged with elegant simplicity. Simply put, this is a fantastic game we all love, we just sometimes forget about it in the mix of the hundreds of games we own and play between the seven members of my gaming crew.

I love describing the core rule of the game because it’s so simple. For each round, you move a cube on one of 4 paths (Science, Exploration, Technology, or Military). That’s it, that’s the game. What happens on those spots, how the mechanics and resource management converge to create strategy, is where the genius of this game stems from. It’s more than that though because there are lots of resource management games out there, What makes this game unique is the dynamic “cultures” you can play, each with its own angle on the game, its own advantages, and its own mechanical architecture. This mixed with the critical play of Tapestry cards creates infinite dynamics making each game a true white elephant experience.

I would not argue all of these “cultures” are created equally, there are certainly winners (looking at you Historians) and losers (Mystics), but we have found over the years playing this game that anyone can win with just about any culture, it’s just about solving that immutable puzzle that lays within and the dynamic nature of how board state develops.

I think it’s worth taking a moment to pat the developers on the back for the expansions to Tapestry as well. Usually, I’m lukewarm on expansions, they tend to overcomplicate already great games and with little payout. With Tapestry the expansions service the game well, adding great new, alternative options that help struggling cultures and balance out the really strong ones. Well done!

Arts and Architecture in particular is a true gem so far as expansions go. It adds an Arts track that makes having a 5th player viable in the game. Until this expansion, being the 5th player and being last in the turn order at the start was a very tough position to win from and this expansion really remedies that.

Fantastic game, I’m happy to both recommend it and bring it back to my best-of list, it deserves the praise and honestly probably should have been on this list all along.

18. 1830: Railways and Robber Barons

Slipping some in recent years, the 18XX game that started an entire sub-genre of gaming is one I find fewer and fewer opportunities to play this one with only a single play in the last 24 months (roughly). That is not a reflection of its quality in any way shape or form, it’s just a bit tough of a game to get to the table.

I still think this is one of the best economic games ever made, in fact the entire 18XX game genre is amazing with wonderful handling of the stock market and company management, a great system for creating and running railways with a deep and meaningful, albeit cutthroat, strategic core gameplay. It’s just a great game, but it does fall into that “takes a long time to play” category of games for most people, so it’s hard to get a crew together to play it.

I can strongly recommend the 1844 and 1854 variants as well, what is cool about this one is that you have two games with two very different focuses. One is more focused on stock markets and investment elements, while the other is more focused on train operations and company management. Both are fantastic.

It’s also not particularly easy to teach so unless you are playing all the time, it can be a bit rough to remember all the rules and pass them on to players even if they are coming back for a 2nd or 3rd run. In fact this one is kind of guilty of having some gotcha rules, so knowing the games mechanics in great detail is critical to success and this can frustrate less attentive players. Suffice it to say it’s just a “difficult” game for a number of reasons and it’s hard to muster up the strength and excitement to get it to the table. It’s definitely a lifestyle game, but fortunately, if you learn one 18XX game like 1830, you are pretty much ready to play any of them.

Even with all that said, I get requests for this one from select members of my gaming group so it is in our consciousness and there is a desire to play it, but yeah, it’s a tough one to recommend to the average gamer. You really need to have an affinity for economic train games, the obvious being obvious. It’s a classic favorite of mine, but it’s getting harder and harder to justify its existence on this list and it drops on this list as a result of the “I must be playing it” rule that I have layered over this list to ensure that everything on here is everything I’m actively still playing.

17. Star Trek Fleet Captains

I’m happy to see this game still make the list, but it’s been quite a while since I was excited to get it to the table. This is a great 2-3 player game for Star Trek fans only which I’m finding fewer and fewer people are these days, though I definitely think its the best Star Trek game I have ever owned or played.

The premise is quite simple, it’s a kind of competitive adventure game with everything you know and love about Star Trek crammed into one game, you get the characters, the ships, the missions, the stories, and the atmosphere you know and love. It’s about the same feeling I get as watching classic Star Trek from any era without the edge lord bullshit of modern Star Trek which by the way, I hate, a stain on an otherwise perfect franchise!

Great game, a great theme, a great look, it has everything you want out of a Star Trek and is the only Star Trek game you will ever need once you have played it. It covers the original series, next-generation series including Deep Space Nine and Voyager, and the Enterprise series. In my view, when Star Trek was at its absolute best.

Unfortunately, this one is out of print and what is available on the secondary market is crazy expensive. It’s kind of a bummer for someone reading this today and wishing to get their hands on it. Before you ask, no I will never sell this one, it’s a permanent fixture and a pride of my game collection.

17. Tides of Iron

Despite having not played this one in quite a while, I will still stick to my guns here and say that this is the single, best tactical World War II game ever made. It’s got simple rules with deep meaningful gameplay without that historical “edginess” a lot of historical war games can have. This is a historical war game made so that anyone can play it without that “war gamer” mentality of most historical war games jammed in there.

Not only that, Tides of Iron uses a lot of very familiar historical war game mechanics so if you want to sort of explore the genre further, it’s a really great ground floor, a sort of entry level into the larger world of historical war games. For a long time, I had a regular opponent for this game and I played the crap out of it and I never felt any need for the many expansions that were put out for it. These days Tides of Iron is played mostly online through various virtual tabletops but it has a niche, but loyal audience and it’s not difficult to find them.

Sadly I don’t think this one is in print right now either, so it can be difficult to find but it was nicely supported for a very long time so there are plenty of copies out there on the secondary market unlike many out-of-print games, this one is very much “gettable”. If you are looking for a great two-player World War II game, this is a fantastic one, well worth the investment

16. Sekigahara: The Unification of Japan

New to the list, for as long as I can remember I have wanted to try a war game using a “blocks” system, reminiscent of classic games like Stratego where you have a sort of dynamic fog of war in which each player can only see their own units. Somehow I knew I would love this sort of game and my instincts were quite right.

I love medieval Japanese themes, probably among my favorite historical and cultural eras so this game in particular fit like a glove. I waited a long time for an updated printing, picked it up and it did not disappoint.

This is a card-driven game (which is another genre I love) combined with a “block” game in which players fight over Japan in a bid for the shogunate in a very straightforward war game.

It does have that “historical war gamer” feel to it, but the mechanics are relatively simple and straight to the point, the gameplay is deep, the strategic elements refined and as a whole the game is perfectly balanced. This game has been around for a long time and for good reason, It truly is a game of skill, but it’s not so involved that a player needs multiple plays to be competitive. Most people I have introduced the game to took to it right away and put up a good fight even on their first run. It’s ranked 200 on Boardgamegeek which is pretty decent for a historical war game, but notably, it holds a very prestigious 5th highest-ranked war game on BBG which is a pretty big deal.

I highly recommend this one for fans of war games, looking for a great two-player experience and though it’s the only block game I have ever played, I would imagine it does quite well by comparison to others in its genre. This is a game with awesome replayability, a new fixture in my collection, and one I always look forward to getting to the table.

15. Terraforming Mars

Putting Terraforming Mars on this list at this stage may seem quite odd, why has it never made the list before? The answer here is quite complex, but it is worth pointing out that this was Gamersdungeon 2016 Game of The Year and scored a 3.65 on its review which is quite decent for a Euro on this site. I’m harsh with Euro games probably because I find games that are not interactive to make for a weak experience and many if not most Euro games are practically solo games you play simultaneously. That is not he case for Terraforming Mars however and not the reason it has been excluded from this list before.

The main reason for it never making a list is because frankly I just didn’t really play it after the initial novelty of it wore off. It had collected dust for the better part of 4 years and I never felt motivated to get it to the table. It is a well-designed game but it is excessively long with a slow, boring start and it’s not particularly fun to teach or even play with people who don’t already know how to play it well. This is one of those games where if you are new, I’m going to beat you senseless for the first dozen or so games until you figure it out.

Over the last few years, several things have changed in my gaming group and for the game in general. For starters, they released several expansions for the game that all targeted the thing about the game I disliked the most which was its slow start and length. The Prelude expansion in particular cuts out that first full hour of the “nothing happens” period at the start of the game. In addition, everyone in my group continued to play the game and they all got good at it, so now when we sit down to play, everyone knows the rules and everyone is very competitive and the game moves at a reasonable pace.

The Prelude expansion for Terraforming Mars is quintessential, I would not play this game without it. It single-handedly cuts an unnecessary, boring first hour out of the game and probably should just be a standard inclusion in a future edition.

Those two things combined have catapulted this game to the front of the line and it got a massive resurgence in my gaming group. Under such ideal conditions, Terraforming Mars shines and is without question what I recognized about it early on, a true gem in the rough that takes a bit of work to fish out. I love this game, I always have but there are lots of games on my shelf I love that rarely see play for various reasons. War of the Ring for example is among my favorite games of all time but it’s a complex two-player game that takes many hours to play. It’s an absolute bear to teach, and like Terraforming Mars sucks balls when playing against new players who don’t know what they are doing, so it’s nearly impossible to get to the table and I haven’t played it in years.

Terraforming Mars earns its rightful place on this list and I’m happy to add it and I’m especially happy to be playing it again.

14. Great Western Trail

This Euro about running cattle in the old west resurfaces on my list for several reasons, but perhaps only one matters which is that I’m playing it all the time online and at home. This game started to run cold for me for a long time but it just keeps coming back around because it is so replayable, so fun, and challenging. It’s just a really good game and I’m happy to welcome it back to my top games list.

I think this is the only game that has ever completely dropped off my top games list and then made a comeback. This is a game that I recommend to all hobbyists without any caveats, for me it’s almost like the new Settlers of Catan, just a staple of my gaming collection worthy of a wide range of situations.

There are two new variants of this one now which give fans even more cowboy for their buck, Great Western Trail New Zealand and Argentina, as well as the Rails of the North expansion.

I haven’t tried the new variants of Great Western Trail, so I have no opinion to offer there, but I have tried the expansion and like most expansions, I find it completely unnecessary. All Rails of the North does for the game is extend its length and makes an otherwise very elegant game, messy, adding needed complexity to the rules.

This expansion adds an entirely separate mico-game with where trains can go, pretty much ruining an otherwise perfect game. It’s a very hard pass.

I personally saw no reason to upgrade to the 2nd edition of the game, but I do find that it’s a bit more streamlined, so if you can get the 2nd edition, it’s probably the way to go. The changes are extremely minor though, so if you already own the 1st edition, there is no reason to get the 2nd edition.

13. Hansa Teutonica

This 2009 Euro about building trade routes first made an appearance at our big board gaming weekend a few years back and has been a staple of that event ever since. The more I played it the more I wanted to play it and at this point, I have come to realize that this one belongs on my list.

This is a tight little action economy type of game about building trade routes in Germany and I will grant you, so far as the theme goes it does not sound exciting because it’s not. This is a thinker, one of those games that will make your brain hurt but win you over on mechanics. It’s a highly interactive Euro with a lot of take that kind of moves and just fits perfectly with my gaming crew of sociopaths who love to watch the world burn.

There is nothing particularly “special” about this cube pusher on a high level, it’s very traditional victory point salad-style game, but it has this really clever interaction and tension from start to finish and the games are always close. I find when my group plays this one, everyone is highly attentive and contemplative with each move. It’s a thinky and clever game that draws out the competitive nature between players and ultimately creates a great gaming experience.

I find this game is far better with more players and though it can run a bit long, on the 2-3 hour side, I find that during the end game, everyone is wishing there were just a couple of more turns so that they could finish this or that route. It is long but in a good way.

Great game, I definitely recommend it if you’re already a fan of Euro games.

12. Western Empires

This one made my TOP 5 BOARDGAMES THAT WERE ALMOST GREAT, BUT HAD A FLAW THAT RUINED THEM list in the number 1 spot for one very critical reason and that is that it has player elimination, made more egregious by being a 12+ hour event game. It’s a terrible sin, especially given that Western Empires is a remake of the 80’s classic Advanced Civilization and 999 games did not take the opportunity to correct this one game-breaking flaw.

Still, it would be a stone-cold lie to pretend like the game is not extraordinary even if it is a product of its time (aka a remake of Advanced Civilization for better or for worse).

Western Empires is not just a game, it’s a gaming experience, an event game of epic proportions that allows for a large gaming group (even larger if you blend it with Eastern Civilization to create Mega Civilization able to support up to 18 players). In fact, the more the merrier, this game really shines with a full table.

While elimination is a part of the game, it’s not exactly a likely scenario with players who are even moderately competent, but it’s a tough game to get any experience with because how often do you have 9 players willing to spend 12+ hours at the table?

I love it, I would love to play it a hell of a lot more than I get an opportunity to, and I do think if you have a group that can get this to the table, this is a gaming event on a scale of which nothing ever produced can match. It’s a one-of-a-kind, white elephant and it earns its place on the list of best games of all time if for no other reason than posterity!

11. Spirit Island

When it comes to complex, intricate, and deep cooperative games, there is only one game that rules the genre today and that is Spirit Island. Easily one of the most elaborate and dynamic cooperative games I have ever played with infinite replayability as well as one of the most challenging games in existence. Be prepared to lose…a lot.

It boasts a massive library of expansions, each one better than the last, Spirit Island is practically a hobby in its own right, certainly a lifestyle game. You can play this one solo, though I think it’s a much lesser experience. This game is best played in a group of 3 or 4.

It’s a long and very contemplative game, you spend a great deal of the time discussing how to approach the constant influx of micro puzzles that need to be solved and there is nothing quite as satisfying as coming up with an answer to seemingly impossible-to-solve situations. In fact, the satisfaction of winning a game of Spirit Island is so rich, I can’t think of a game I’m more eager to play.

It is a time-consuming game though, even with a group well versed in the rules, Spirit Island is an absolute minimum of a 3-hour experience and will usually hit that 4-5+ hour space which means it borders on an event game. I would argue it’s actually a great game to build an event around, though it’s not the sort of “everyone is laughing and having a good time” type of event, more of a “serious gamers” type of event, which is not my personal favorite way to run big gaming events. I rather have everyone drinking beer and giggling at my events and this game doesn’t really produce that kind of atmosphere.

Fantastic game, destined to become a classic.

10. Paths of Glory

I will be the first to admit that this is not a game for most people, hell even among historical war game fans this game falls into a rather niche genre. For one it’s based on World War I which is a historical period that isn’t exactly well-known, in some ways it almost feels like you’re playing some sort of historical fantasy game. It’s a card-driven game, it has a point-to-point map and it’s driven by some quirky mechanics to flesh out the history you probably don’t know that much about. Suffice it to say, it’s peculiar from most perspectives.

That said, I find it to be an establishment in its own right, this is a game you can study, learn its intricacies, and really dive deep into the many implications of strategies and counter strategies. It’s absolutely one of the most beautifully designed games I have ever run across, but it demands a lot from a player, a true commitment to find its genius and if you can find a regular opponent that enjoys all of these amazing nuances as much as you do, you get magic at the table.

Hands down one of my favorite historical war gaming delicacies, this refined masterpiece is a piece of gaming history no true hobbyist should pass up. Historical war games simply don’t get better than this, it’s a historical war game that is itself a piece of gaming history by which all others are measured in my opinion.

9. Through The Ages: Story of a New Civilization

Through the Ages in one form or another has been on my top gaming list for many years, at one point even rising to the number 1 spot. I’m a huge fan of Vlaada Chvatil, I find him to be a completely uncompromising and highly original game designer. By being that however, he tends to make very niche games that for most gamers fall into either the “love it” or “hate it” category with little in between.

I consider Through The Ages Chvatil’s Mona Lisa, but he has brought other amazing original titles like Mage Knight The Board Game, Codenames, Galaxy Trucker, Dungeon Lords, and Space Alert most of which grace my shelves, all distinctively unique and classics in their own right. Each one is more ingenious than the last, he is an absolute miracle worker. You want to be a great designer, play his games, and learn how it’s done.

Through The Ages is more than just a brilliant original design, it’s one of the most intriguing, robust, and challenging games I have ever played. It’s definitely far too long falling into that “pretty much all day” category, but I can’t think of another game on this list that I would happily call in sick to work and spend 8 hours in a chair playing. This is a game that keeps you busy, you are constantly trying to assess and reassess your situation, formulating your grand strategy, and trying to find that narrow line to victory. It feels very much like a race in a lot of ways.

It’s an engrossing, full-bodied Euro game that treats you with intelligence and respect. You always know what you want to achieve, but finding the route to victory is difficult yet so satisfying. No game have I ever played that I enjoyed both winning and losing as much as Through The Ages, it is an absolute masterpiece of game design.

If you lack the time or players to get this one to the table, I highly recommend the digital adaptation. It shaves a couple hours of the gameplay time and its a perfect translation of the table top game.

8. Dune Imperium

At this point, I consider Dune Imperium a staple of my gaming collection and a default option for any board game night. I have spoken about this game endlessly and with how popular it is, it’s pointless to recommend it as anyone reading this has probably already played it. If you haven’t, you’re being silly, this is your next purchase, no gaming collection is complete without this one on the shelf. Its perfectly suited for any gaming group of any level and being a Dune fan is just a candy-coated toping and is not mandatory to enjoy this title.

Its clever combination of deck building and worker placement is flawless, its balance a perfect diamond and it looks amazing on the table. I adore the Dune setting and as a fan, I can tell you that the theme sticks the landing made even better with perfectly executed expansions. It’s a tight, strategic and dynamic Euro that basically perfects every mechanic it uses. There is nothing wasted, nothing overcooked, it’s effectively a perfect game.

If I have any complaints about Dune Imperium is that I don’t get to play it often enough.

7. Twilight Imperium 4th edition

Twilight Imperium has been swimming around on my top 10 list for more than a decade at this point, I have played it so much over the years I have lost count. It is one of my all-time favorites, one of the greatest epic civilization builders ever made and one of the best event games I have ever owned. It is pure magic in a box but any recommendation comes with some caveats.

It’s a very long and complex game that requires a fully committed table of 4 to 6 players ready to give up their day and fully engross themselves in this 4x game that is as much about game state as is player state of mind. That is not an easy table to fill. It’s also a tough and not always fair game, equal footing is not a thing here with various dynamics that are only leveled by player interaction and game knowledge. In a way its both a test of your skill and your character, with a lot of take the mechanics and sometimes even mean-spirited moves that are required to win. It takes a mature audience with the ability to handle this style of competitive game, definitely not something for everyone. Over the years I have found far more players that are not suited to the game than I have those that are.

The more years pass the fewer TI4 games I have as a result and though I dare not say it is fading out of existence, over the last couple of years I have found much easier games, less in-your-face games of its ilk to get to the table and so I find myself sort of replacing it.

I think Twilight Imperium is a masterpiece, an experience that cannot be matched, there is no doubt in my mind it’s one of the best games ever made, but I would say you want to make sure you have at least 4 players ready to take on this beast. It’s a lifestyle game without question.

6. Eclipse The 2nd Dawn for the Galaxy

Eclipse, though I would argue is not a replacement for Twilight Imperium by any stretch of the imagination, certainly is the game I would pull off the shelf in most company to get a 4x experience. Eclipse is a Euro-style game, with clear rules and considerably less punchy mechanics. It’s also a lot shorter game than Twilight Imperium by at least 2-3 hours, so it’s a hell of a lot more accessible and easier to get to the table. You don’t get the same experience mind you, but you do get a great, full-fledged 4x experience nonetheless.

Aside from its obvious comparison to Twilight Imperium, it has its own thing going on. There are a lot of unique handling of classic 4x mechanics, in particular in the area of technology development and fleet building. It’s a diverse and interesting system that allows players a great deal of freedom in customization over the units they will conquer the galaxy with.

It also has a much easier-to-digest point-scoring system so there is a lot less meta-explanation required to understand the difference between knowing the rules and knowing how to play as is the case in Twilight Imperium.

The result is a much lighter, very entertaining, and very approachable 4x game that doesn’t require you to do a lot of event planning. Like any other board game, you can just pull it out and play.

There is a ton of strategy in the game so you get the full robust 4x experience, You’re not trimming any fat here, it’s just a lot more streamlined, and perhaps it’s fair to say more focused on letting the mechanics do the talking. Great game, definitely deserves the win over Twilight Imperium if for no other reason than it sees far more table time.

I will say this about the Twilight Imperium to Eclipse gaming experience comparison. Twilight Imperium is to Eclipse what fine dining is to Taco Bell. Meaning, it is not a game of which one can become a connoisseur, you are not going to turn Eclipse into a lifestyle game or plan events around it. Your exploration of the nuances of this game is relatively shallow by comparison to Twilight Imperium. In short, Eclipse is a fantastic game, but it’s not a unique gaming experience.

In a perfect world, I would pick Twilight Imperium over Eclipse always, but as I live in the real world, Eclipse is a far easier game to get to the table and far more approachable by the overwhelming majority of gamers. If you are looking for a truly robust and heavy 4x game that you can really sink your teeth into, Twilight Imperium has no equal.

5. Star Wars Unlimited

I will be the first to admit that I’m smitten with this game and its addition to the list notwithstanding, putting it in the number 5 spot is presumptuous at best. Still, I cannot deny how addictive this game, how clever the mechanics are and what a joy it is to build decks and play Star Wars Unlimited the CCG. I can think of no game I played this year that has had this much pull.

Not since Magic The Gathering when it was first released have I bought into a CCG with so much excitement and gusto. I really hope that Fantasy Flight Games continues with this CCG with the delicate and precision it requires, because right now after the core game release and its first expansion, I can say without reservation that they nailed it.

In theme, mechanics, the business model, the right mixture of rarity and the delicate balance are all nearly pitch-perfect. It’s on such a great track and if FFG can keep the momentum going, I can see this game making a big, long-term splash in the competitive CCG genre and in my gaming group. It’s without a doubt one of the best CCGs I have played in a great many years.

4. Imperial Struggle

There is no game on this list that I long to play more than Imperial Struggle, the absolute king of the influence control card game genre. The little brother to Twilight Struggle, this quasi-card game takes a side step from its forebearer, and rather than focusing on the card play itself, it instead shifts the focus of influence control to a far more elaborate and complex area control game and in my humble opinion, nails it.

Imperial Struggle handles the history of the 100 year war between England and France splendidly, while creating a complex and highly replayable card-driven area control game that offers tons of dynamics, but retains that “strategic pre-planning” you got with Twilight Struggle hand management. Unlike Twilight Struggle however you don’t need to memorize the decks in order to be competitive, this is far less a game resolved by player knowledge and far more on player strategic execution at the table and it’s why I find it a far superior game to its predecessor.

You might notice that Twilight Struggle is not on my list, but that is not meant as an insult, I really do love playing Twilight Struggle, I think it’s a fantastic game, but it’s one that is incredibly difficult to get to the table in good form. What I mean is that the game is difficult to teach, it takes many plays to be proficient at it and its an absolute chore to play against an inexperienced opponent. The only way to get experience is to lose tons of games and that is neither fun for the teacher or the student.

Imperial Struggle suffers from a high learning curve as well, but the game is played on the table, not in the nuance of card management and that just makes it a lot more approachable and a lot easier to offer advice and teach as you play. I find it much easier to get someone into a competitive state and you can be off and running with this game with great competitive matches after no more than a game or two.

I love Imperial Struggle, I think it’s hands down one of the best games ever made and earns its rightful list at the top of this list.

3. Lord of the Rings The Card Game

Lord of the Rings the living card game to me is the single best solo game ever made and this is how I play it almost exclusively. Not to say it’s not also a great cooperative game, because it’s outstanding when played in 2 or 3 players, but the game requires a high-level commitment to deck building and that is not an easy thing to get into if you’re not collecting. Building decks for others to use works ok, but this is not a casual pick-up-and-play game either so without that full buy-in from everyone at the table it’s not going to deliver on its potential.

As a solo game, however, LOTR is an absolute beast and a masterpiece of the highest order. I adore this game, I have been playing it with considerable consistency for the better part of a decade and I’m as excited to get it on the table today as I was the day I got it.

It has tons of expansions with amazing versatility and is unquestionably one of the most challenging games on this list. Every victory in this game is so satisfying, it feels fantastic, but it’s a brutally tough game. Every quest is a self-contained puzzle to be resolved and it’s truly a rare deck that is up to the challenge of conquering all of these. You spend a lot of time rebuilding decks and it’s just pure joy for card players like me. Every build is designed to target a specific puzzle presented by the countless quests and that moment when you figure it out and beat something that seemed simply impossible to overcome is an experience no gamer should live without.

If you like card games and are looking for something for solo play, in particular, if you love the Middle Earth setting, this game is perfect for you and comes with my highest recommendation.

2. Empire Of The Sun

I can’t lie, while I love all sorts of games to me there is nothing quite as engrossing and as addictive as a big, epic, historical war game and I’m completely fascinated by the war in the Pacific which I think is one of the most strategically complex conflicts in all of human history. To replicate it in perfect detail in a card-driven war game, especially one designed by the master himself, Mark Herman, the Chuck Norris of historical war game designers is absolute bliss.

Empire of the Sun has a learning curve so high, that there is nothing to compare it to, it is one of the most involved and intricate games I have ever learned to play. It took me the better part of a full year before I was playing the game correctly. Hell, it’s an achievement in its own right just to understand how to play, let alone learning how to play it well. Teaching it is an absolute nightmare but when you find someone who has taken the time to learn, the result is table magic.

This game is a masterpiece of historical war game design, You feel powerful and in command of the entire war from one of the two sides (Allied Forces or The Nation of Japan) and you get a sense of rewriting history. it is in a word, one of the greatest games ever made.

1. War Room

War Room is a unique entry to my list, it’s unquestionably my favorite game of all time, but it’s unique in that I don’t normally recommend it to most gamers and gaming crews.

The reason is simple, this massive game that comes in a box larger than classic Milton Bradly master series games is a 12+ hour epic level war game. To call it niche is an understatement. It takes a gaming group with very specific tastes to really get the most out of this one.

As an event game I think it’s quite perfect. It’s a team-based game so you don’t have this “I’m doing badly but still have to play for 10 hours” thing a lot of event games have which is a huge boon. There is a sense of camaraderie and interest in the stuff going on, on the board even if you’re not involved and it has these great moments of planning and contemplation with exciting “let’s see what happens” resolution.

You also don’t need to grind games out to a finish, at any time either side can surrender and you still end up with a satisfying resolution as there are no victory points, you either win the war or you don’t.

Mechanically the game has hidden orders (ala-classic diplomacy) and a clever use of initiative so each round you put in your orders and then later discover how it all plays out. There is a lot of risk management and mitigation but the board is so big and the number of orders you can give is quite limited so you have to pick your battles carefully. It’s all about strategy, making feints, long-term and short-term planning and glorious combats that play out on a semi-tactical battle board for those exciting dice-chucking moments. Its just the perfect game for a big gaming event, but I would always caution gamers considering the purchase that no matter how enthusiastic you are to play this game, and believe me I understand the pull. There is nothing worse than owning it and watching it collect dust so make sure you have the gaming crew ready to put in the hours on this one.

One of the best gaming experiences you will have ever, bar none.

Conclusion

Comparing the list to the one I did in 2022 a few games have dropped from the list.

Root was hanging on in the number 20 spot, but doesn’t quite make the cut this time around. I still think it’s a great game, but it has two core and related issues that are really tough to get around. Its an absolute bear to teach largely due to its most prominent feature, the asymmetrical sides which leads to the second issue which is that it never makes the table because playing against people who are learning really spoils the game. It’s one of those games where everyone needs to know what to and not to do, else a weak link can king make someone pretty quickly and kind of ruin the game for everyone else. It’s a bummer, I love playing this game, but only with people that are already proficient at the game. It’s actually a surprisingly quick game when everyone knows how to play and one of the longest and most painful ones to bring the table when people don’t.

War Of The Ring also drops off the list. Over the last decade, this game has been dropping from my radar and collecting a lot of dust. Much like root, the issue isn’t the game, it’s teaching the rules and that combination of playing against someone who doesn’t know what they are doing is really boring. The fact that it’s a two-player game also doesn’t help in my situation as a 2 player game night is pretty rare around these parts these days. I love it and hope I will get to play it in the future, but for now, it goes the way of the Dodo bird.

The U.S. Civil War also makes an exist. I love historical war games, especially big epic ones but this one is just not to the tastes of most of my gaming crew. The good news is that its a fun solo game and I do pull it out once a year to have a run at it and I do enjoy it, but that is not the stuff of a best-of-all-time game.

Peloponnesian War also exits but just barely. It was a battle between a stone-cold classic that I love to play and a new lover (Underwater City). I chose Underwater City less so because it was new and more because games are generally more fun to play against opponents. Peloponnesian War is an amazing and very unique solo game, I love the hell out of it and I expect it might even resurface on this list in the future but for now it sleeps in the unregistered 21st position on this list.

Washington’s War was largely replaced by Imperial Struggle. These are two card-driven influence games and though I think they could happily live on the list together, the truth is that since I got Imperial Struggle when a two-player opportunity comes up, I have a heap of games that I would rather play, in particular Imperial Struggle. The same thing for Caesar: Rome vs. Gaul, I love it and will happily play it but given the opportunity, I’m more likely to jank of Imperial Struggles chain instead.

The Big Board Gaming Weekend!

In less than 48 hours the annual big board gaming weekend begins and for 8th year in a row, my crew will get together for a 4 day fun-filled and non-stop gaming weekend. There are sure to be new games that will show up and as I do every year, there will be a thorough blog post!

Best of List

Top 10 Collectable Card Games Of All Time

In the early 80’s there were three games that really defined what would become the tabletop gaming hobby. Dungeons and Dragons, Warhammer 40k, and Magic The Gathering. Magic The Gathering of course is the grandaddy of collectible card games but fast forward over 40 years later and CCG’s have become a sub-hobby all on their own.

I don’t talk about CCG’s very often but in the last decade, CCG’s have gone through something of a renaissance and with each new CCG that has come out, the genre is making leaps and bounds for the better.

In today’s list, I will pick my top 10 collectible card games from the awesome past to the wonderful present. Enjoy the list!

10. Legend Of The Five Rings (1st edition)

Legend of the Five Rings 1st edition by Alderace Entertainment falls into what I like to call the “Hardcore CCGs” category from the 90’s . This was a fairly robust game from a robust gaming era that was very heavy on the theme and backstory and for fans out there, it wasn’t just a card game but much like other early CCG’s like Magic The Gathering, Legend of the Five Rings was a lifestyle game.

I think what separated LotFR from other LCG’s was that it was part of a multifaceted franchise that covered gaming as part of a spectrum. You had Legend of the Five Rings RPG which in the 90’s was competing against heavy hitters like D&D and Vampire The Masquerade. You also had a miniature game line called Clan War which competed against the Gameswork shop heavy hitters like Warhammer Fantasy. Finally, you had a huge library of novels dedicated to the story of this amazing game world, books which when released coincided with card set releases so that when you read a book about a certain part of the history of the game, you then got to play it out in the card game.

Unfortunately despite very modest economic success, Legend of the Five Rings in all its forms was never terribly popular and never reached anything beyond its extremely niche audience.

Fantasy Flight Games picked up the rights to the Legend of the Five Rings and revised the game in a second edition, but this too saw only minimal success and ultimately faded out of existence rather quickly.

This game was made for fans and it catered very heavily to this niche audience. In my humble opinion, this is one of the all-time classics that rightfully deserves to be on this list even if it’s at the tail end. It is an amazingly rich and complex game with tons of great lore to support it and without question, some of the best art ever put on a gaming card. Awesome, albeit retired CCG.

9. Magic The Gathering

I was hesitant to put this one on the list at all because I could file a 500-page novel worth of complaints about it, its design, the company that runs it, and the endless stream of bullshit that makes this a game I have no desire to play at all.

Still, there was a time when I lived and breathed magic and it wasn’t a short time, most of the 90’s by my estimation. Like other games from the 90’s Magic The Gathering was a lifestyle game and equally as all games in the 90’s, it was mostly broken as fuck!

Yet, Magic The Gathering endures and by all accounts it’s still one of the most popular CCG’s on the market today and this has been so since its inception. No CCG ever has nor likely will come even within a light year of the success Magic The Gathering has seen. Magic The Gathering sells more cards in a year than all other CCG’s combined sell in a decade. In a word, there is no such thing as “competition” when it comes to market share, Magic The Gathering rules undisputed.

How? Why? It’s a good question. Mechanically Magic The Gathering has a lot of design flaws that would never be put into a game today. It’s a game where you can build a legal tournament deck in which you can win a match before your opponent ever gets a turn to play. You can build decks that spawn an infinite number of monsters, or do an infinite amount of damage. The amount of stupid shit in this game is endless but I think the reason people like it and perhaps rightfully so is not despite these things but because of them.

There is something uniquely clever to a game that has so much depth and interaction, that if you study it long and hard, you can completely unravel it.

I crap on it, but it is the granddaddy of CCG’s and this list would be incomplete if I did not put it on the list so here it is, but frankly, I can think of a 100 CCG’s I rather play than Magic The Gathering. It does however have its charm, I can’t deny that of all the games on this list, I have played Magic The Gathering the most and so its place in CCG history and this list is secured.

8. Vampire Eternal Struggle

Vampire Eternal Struggle is to me, everything you think you want to have in a great CCG, which results in an overcooked game to a point where the game is nearly unplayable. Its a effectively a game that appears to be designed by Vampire The Masquerade fans that kind of don’t know what they are doing, but fully understand what a Vampire The Masquerade CCG should feel like, if that makes any sense. This was not all that unusual for a card game in the 90’s, making stupidly complex card games was kind of a thing back then, but even so far as complex CCG’s go, Vampire Eternal Struggle stretched the definition.

This was a game that could take upwards of 3-4+ hours to finish a single match, there was a ridiculous amount of rules weight and card interaction and in a lot of ways it mimicked the obscene level of detail that was customary in The Vampire The Masquerade RPG.

As overcooked as it was, however, there was true magic in the way the game executed because it did what White-Wolf RPGs were famous for which was to tell an amazing story. This was a game that even though I haven’t played it for 20 years, I still remember specific matches I had. All-nighters where me and a couple of friends effectively created our own little micro-universe for an evening in the world of darkness.

It was a unique game in a couple of ways. First and foremost it was best played in multiplayer, rather than head-to-head which separated it from most of the CCG’s out there that had modes for multiplayer but weren’t designed for it. The second thing was that you had this amazing world of darkness behind it, a setting so fleshed out and so recognizable to fans that each card had impact and meaning that went well beyond anything you would expect to be able to put into a card. Above all else, however, it was a brutish and harsh – take that – kind of a game, with ruthless mechanics that brought a lot of emotion and player interaction that went well beyond the mechanics of the game, much like the RPG on which it’s based.

This was a fantastic CCG and recently the game was revised and reprinted so it is still very much available today for people to explore. I would caution however that this is a game made for Vampire The Masquerade fans, by Vampire The Masquerade fans. If you don’t know what that is and why it’s awesome, this game is definitly not for you, if you do, you probobly already know about this game and don’t need me to tell you how awesome it is.

7. Arkham Horror LCG

Arkham Horror the card game was released by Fantasy Flight Games in 2016 during a period when FFG was producing CCG’s under the Living Card Game strategy where rather than having random booster packs, you would have pre-constructed expansions. It was also not a competitive card game but rather a cooperative card game in which players would effectively go around a dynamically constructed game board based on a location and solve mysterious while fighting monsters using decks they built.

I own and love this game, I actually think it’s pretty fantastic but generally speaking I also think it has one major flaw which is that it’s a cooperative game where once you complete a “quest”, it’s a bit like a legacy game where a lot of the hype and excitement disappears and the game starts feeling like your watching a scrooby-doo re-runs.

The format just lacks sustainability and while I still love picking this game up every long once in a while and playing a few rounds, it lacks freshness unless you are constantly buying the latest expansions. I did that for a while until I realized that I would effectively play each expansion once and then never go back to it because I knew the story, I knew the mystery, I had figured it all out.

It’s a very fun game mechanically but it almost feels like it would have done a lot better if the “quest” creation was turned over to the community and the game was a digital card game rather than a physical one. If you had an endless stream of new challenges that you could play on a daily or weekly basis, I think the game would have a lot more longevity.

Needless to say, even with this one flaw, I think this is a brilliant game and deserves to be on this list.

6. Warhammer 40k Conquest

I have to admit I only played this game a few times and never actually bought into it and there is good reason for it, but still the few times I played it, it made a big impact on me and I always think of it whenever the subject of CCG’s comes up. Like Arkham Horror this was one of many Fantasy Flights LCG’s (Living Card Games), but it was a 2 player competitive game. I think this is one of the most underrated competitive card games out there today.

The theme and franchise appreciation here is important as the card game and the cards themselves capture the Warhammer 40k universe perfectly but what I think really made this game stand out is that the interaction and speed of play was balanced perfectly. It’s a tight game where players are making impactful decisions with each card play and games are almost always definined by decision rather than deck or card draw, it really is a game of pure strategy and I think that is actually kind of rare in card games. Most CCG’s are defined by deck building as much as strategy but this one is one of those games where what deck you played mattered considerably less than what you do with it at the table.

Above and beyond that however I think the asymetrical factions really shine here, each faction had its own thing going on and FFG made sure every faction of the 40k universe was covered before the game went end of life so its a self contained and very complete feeling card game set. The fact that it went out of print and is no longer supported doesn’t matter and thankfully they printed so much of this game its actually quite easy and cheap to get a hold of a complete collection.

Really fun game, I think this is still well worth getting today even if its out of print. Just a very good, self contained, head to head experience built around an awesome franchise and a great theme. A game made for 40k fans.

The only reason I have personally never bought into is that in my gaming group, at the time, we had a lot of stuff going on gaming wise and it was a rare situation where economically I had to make some tough calls. I regret that, I wished I owned the entire set and plan to some day soon purchase it for my collection.

5. Star Wars Destiny

Heading into the top 5 on my list, it would be criminal to exclude Star Wars Destiny, without question one of the best Star Wars franchise CCG’s ever produced. It suffered from a rather poor business model and went extinct rather quickly, which was a real bummer, but it remains in my collection and I’m to this day always ready to pull it out and play.

This CCG is quite unique in that it uses dice as part of the card play mechanic and it also makes use of a very tight deck which makes deck building a really light element of the game which is great for beginners. That said, I actually think the nuance of this game is difficult to grasp and many veteran card players felt the luck element of this built in dice mechanic made it a less competitive experience. That might or might not have been true, but to me, competitive is not a reason to or not to play a game, I think as long as the game is fun, that is all the juice it needs. Destinty was certainly that.

I think Fantasy Flight Games should have stuck to their LCG model for this game because one of the things that really killed this game is the fact that you often needed 2-3 cards (with coinciding dice) in order to make a certain card playable, this was especially true about heroe’s so what you ended up with is a lot of cards and dice that you really couldn’t put in a deck and remain reasonably balanced for the general power level of the game. This mixed in with the fact that most of the hero/villain cards where uncommon and rares, made collecting the right cards a pain in the ass and more a frustrating than fun experience.

In the end FFG also had a lot of trouble balancing this game and their were quite a few broken and OP cards as well as a lot of junk cards you would never use for any reason. I’m not sure if the issue was with a lack of testing or what but at the end of the day the game did have a few issues.

Nonetheless, I consider this one of the all-time great CCG’s, just a super fun, tight little game that was very approachable albeit probably one of the most expensive to collect, in particular if you were going for competitive play. These days you can still find it in bargain bins and I say it’s still well worth getting a collection going.

4. Android Netrunner

Netrunner is a unique entry on this list for two reasons. First, it’s the only game on the list that is truly asymmetrical, yet managed to be a well-balanced competitive one on one CCG. I can’t think of any card game in the history of card games that does this, it’s a white elephant in this regard. Secondly, this is the only game in the history of card games that I can think of that died at what I would consider to be the height of its success. Quite literally this game got better and better with each expansion and when it was cancelled they had released what I would consider to be the best expansion ever released for the game. How and why it was discontinued is just a complete mystery to me.

The wonderful thing about Android Netrunner was that it was one of those rare cases in which deck building, while important, was not the defining factor for victory. How you used your cards, how you approached each match and your knowledge of the game had far more impact than the strength of your deck. More importantly, it was about the fairest playing field in a CCG ever put out mainly because, like most Fantasy Flight Games of this era, it was a living card game so everyone was building decks from the same set.

I played this game exclusively with the same opponent for several years online using tabletop simulator so I never actually purchased a single card, but I consider those games to be among the card gaming experiences I ever had.

This is an auto-buy in my book, one of the best card games ever made with some of the best card art ever printed.

3. Game of Thrones The Card Game (2nd Edition)

We are now reaching what I consider to be the creme de la creme of card games. Game of Thrones the card game is without a doubt the king of multiplayer games, one that captures its theme with perfection both mechanically and visually.

I love this game, but like many CCG’s I’m a dabbler rather than a committer, but this is more a result of economic self-preservation than anything else. There are many collectible games out there, I buy into and pay obscene prices for many of them, and at the end of the day you have to make some hard choices, one can’t expect to be able to buy into everything.

That said I have friends who went ape shit and we have more than enough cards in the gaming group for us to have an occasional crack at this one and I consider any such opportunity an absolute pleasure.

This is a fantastic CCG that captures the momentum of the Song of Ice and Fire story, ensuring that characters are at the heart of the game, with thematic powers that result in play resolutions that truly tells a Game of Thrones story.

Of all the games I recommend on this list, this one comes without caveats, even if you are not a Game of Thrones fan, this is such a great card game that even without the appreciation of the theme, this is a great design. Good games like this come along only once in a while and they are not to be missed, this is an auto-buy in my opinion for card lovers.

2. Star Wars Unlimited

Star Wars Unlimited dropped like Thor’s hammer into the CCG scene, stealing the show and proving that there is plenty of fresh ideas and new life left to bring to the genre. This is without question my new love. I never thought anything quite as good as Star Wars Destiny would ever come around again and bring Star Wars to the CCG table top, but I was wrong, Star Wars Unlimited is perfection personified.

As of this writing, only the initial core set for the game has been launched with the first expansion only 24 hours away as of this writing, so it’s hard to predict the game’s future. That said, the first release was absolutely perfect blend of deck building, competitive play and precision design. This game is so good and I know I’m not the only one who thinks so because it is absolutely impossible to purchase unless you pre-order and anything that is in stock in seconds after it drops. It’s that good.

I will never proclaim a Magic The Gathering killer, because I don’t think any such thing will ever come along, but Star Wars Unlimited is objectively a superior game to Magic The Gathering in every measurable way, yet has the same addictive deck-building quality and card interaction that made MTG such a landmark game.

I don’t care who you are if you are not playing Star Wars Unlimited, you are missing out on the single best competitive CCG ever made by a massive margin, there is absolutely nothing in the same league with this game. It’s a modern masterpiece.

1. Lord of the Rings The Living Card Game

I will be the first to admit that Lord of the Rings The Living Card Game is a personal taste thing more than a perfectly designed game. This is my number-one choice, not THE number-one game. That honor goes to Star Wars Unlimited. Still, with that said, I love this game above all others for a single, indisputable reason and that is that it captures Middle Earth with such perfection, such epic scale and so much thematic joy through its gameplay and art that I honestly could not bare to ever put any CCG above this one. It’s not just the perfect CCG, its a perfect game.

Like most Fantasy Flight Games, this is a game from the Living Card Era which I think is perfect for a cooperative deck-building game. For me the reason I love this game so much is that it’s every bit as good playing solo as it is playing in a group. Its perfect with experience CCG players and complete newbies who have never played a card game before. Its scalable with quests that take 15 minutes to epic sagas that take weeks to complete. It has deep, strategic deck-building elements or can be used with default theme decks. In a word, every conceivable gaming situation you have, it has you covered.

Love this game, there is nothing in the world of tabletop gaming I can recommend more than Lord of the Rings the Living Card Game. It’s perfect.

    Best of List

    Top 5 Boardgames that were almost great, but had a flaw that ruined them

    I have not been writing enough as of late for this blog, but my life is busy, and writing is a hobby not a job so I often have to take breaks. One type of article that is usually easy and fast for me to write is a top X list, so today that is what we are going to try to achieve.

    This might be a wonky list but I do find that many games out there look amazing, have a cool franchise behind them or just seem like they will be great and end up letting me down. It’s how and why they end up on my shelf and on this list. Today we pick out 5 and talk about them. Here we go!

    5. Crusader Kings by Free League Publishing

    Crusader Kings the PC game is one of my all-time favorite strategy games, I have played it for more hours and years than I care to admit.

    A big part of the joy of Crusader Kings is that you essentially re-write history from the perspective of a single historical person, influencing people and nations around them. You create a legacy over time (a family dynasty) and you try to keep that legacy alive and thriving through your blood relatives, offspring, and noble claims. It’s a lot of fun.

    When Crusader Kings the board game was announced, I didn’t hesitate even for a second, it was on my shelf and the table at the first opportunity.

    From the reading of the rules, the aesthetic, and the very clear attempt at replicating the PC game experience, Crusader Kings the board game had everything going for it and it seemed like it was going to make a nice smooth tabletop transition.

    Unfortunately for all of its mechanics that do replicate the feel of the PC game and capture that experience, the one thing that didn’t transition particularly well and ultimately caused this one to flop is the overindulgence in randomness.

    One of the key mechanics of this game was random draws from a bag to resolve conflicts between players or between player and game, but unfortunately, the impact of this one mechanic simply had too much impact on the game, so much so that it overwhelmed any aspect of a strategy. Good consecutive draws from this bag that was used for resolving various conflicts could and often did result in such a huge impact on the outcome of the game that in the end, that is all the game is. Draw tokens from the bag, do it well, you will win, do it poorly and you will lose.

    It’s really sad because a lot of the mechanics in the game are well thought out, but this random token draw resolution system just breaks it.

    For such an expensive game, I honestly can’t recommend it, but it was quite ok the first couple of plays as it takes time for people to notice the flaw, but once everyone does, it’s a bit like a movie trailer that spoils the plot of the movie. At that point, there is no longer any reason to see the movie, other than just to go through the motions and that is exactly how Crusader Kings feels after a couple of plays.

    4. Archipelago by Ludically

    Archipelago is a game with a questionable theme, colonization, which rubs some people the wrong way. To me, it’s history, and I’m not phased by the fact that the history of mankind is filled with ugliness. I like playing games with a good historical theme and when that is mixed with dynamic world or engine building mechanics, I’m always ready to try it.

    Archipelago promised to be a kind of civilization builder with exploration mechanics built around a dynamically constructed hexagon game board. It had all sorts of clever mechanics, a kind of mixture of Euro mechanics with resource management, and some cool development elements.

    All together the game played quite well and although I will point out that some of the art was unnecessarily extra racist which did not sit well with me, the core flaw of the game was the hidden victory conditions.

    All victory conditions are hidden, you don’t know how to win the game or what to focus on. You find out at the end of the game what the victory conditions are and how you faired. As the victory conditions could be quite varied and there can be odd mixtures of things that matter at the end of the game, who won was completely random.

    It’s about the most nonsensical way of handling victory conditions I have ever seen in any game, it felt a bit like playing chess except that if you get checkmated, there is a 50% chance that you win the game and a 50% chance that you will lose.

    It completely ruins this game and unfortunately, this victory conditions mechanic is buried into the core game so deeply that there is no good way to house rule or alter it without fundamentally changing how the game is played.

    I hope that someday someone with some sensitivity training and some common sense game design experience makes a 2nd edition of Archipelago because I think there is a lot of potential in this one, but as it is, this is a very hard pass.

    3. Exodus Proxima Centauri by NSKN Games

    Proxima Centauri is marketed as “Twilight Imperium Light”, a promise many games make but few deliver. Of all the ones I have tried, only Eclipse The 2nd Dawn for the Galaxy and Proxima Centauri come close.

    Unfortunately, where Eclipse succeeds, Proxima Centauri fails pretty hard in my opinion.

    I will make the assumption that you know what Twilight Imperium is, if not, the basics are this. It’s a space civilization builder that is driven by classic 4x gameplay ala classic Master of Orion in which players are a space-faring civilization fighting for control of the galaxy. It’s a simple enough concept but the one aspect of this genre of gaming is that in principle, it’s driven by politics, negotiations, trade deals, and deception. In a way these games are two games in one, the one taking place on the table and the one taking place in everyone’s head. These are games where an action you take can be seen as aggressive, a pre-emptive strike, or even a prelude to war, and as such players often act in character and respond in ways that aren’t necessarily strategic, but personal within the context of the game’s story that ultimately becomes a sort of made up history between players.

    It’s part of the fun of these games and really at the core of why the fan base loves them.

    Games that claim to be like “Twilight Imperium”, which by all accounts is considered the premiere and undisputed king of this genre of games are making a pretty bold claim and have a lot to live up to.

    The issue with Exodus is that while it has all the troupes of the genre you would expect, in effect that core 4x gameplay, the game gives players no good reason to interact in that all-important diplomatic/negotiation-social interaction space. In essence, you just play the mechanics like you would any Euro game. Sure what people do affects you, but you don’t have enough take-that mechanics or reactions you could take to give the game that diplomatic and political edge or fear of retaliation or consequences to people’s actions created by other players for which Twilight Imperium is famous for.

    Additionally, there are some quirky and very intensive shuffling of tokens that just adds to the administrative end of the game, but adds virtually nothing strategically. It’s one of those games in which there are some great ideas but none of the mechanics are all that refined.

    What is worse is that it’s only marginally shorter than Twilight Imperium, which is important because one of the only reasons anyone ever really looks for alternatives to Twilight Imperium is game length. TI4, for example, takes 6 to 8 hours to play and one of the core reasons why often Eclipse is recommended is that it can be played in half that time with much of that Twilight Imperium core 4x gameplay intact. Exodus can’t even claim that as the game takes a minimum of 5 to 6 hours to complete and commonly exceeds that time.

    In the end, it just doesn’t make the cut as a 4x game. I think it’s an ok game, I’m not suggesting it’s bad but if you are looking to get into the 4x space civilization-building games, Twilight Imperium and Eclipse are superior in every category so I’m not sure why you would pick this one over those two fantastic options.

    2. Kemet by Matagot

    Kemet is, or at least, was kind of a moderately famous game mainly because they had Dice Tower that gave it a lot of free advertisement. I would argue, in its own way it’s a cool, very fair war game built around mythology which I think is a great theme for a war game.

    In Kemet which is a kind of worker placement war game, players essentially build up armies that include mythical monsters and fight each other for control of the map and ultimately victory points. One of the key mechanics is making “advancement” purchases that give you various benefits. Each of these advancements has a color associated with it and a kind of general theme to that color.

    The nice thing is that it’s not a dice chucker so there is a cool card mechanic to resolving battles, so all and all it’s very tactical and strategic. It is great, except for one flaw which once you discover it, the game is completely ruined.

    Spoiler alert, but the white advancement is at least 3 to 1 more powerful than the advancement of other colors. Buy those and you auto-win. If everyone is aware of this, the game is a race to buy up as many white advancements as possible, it is a mathematically impossible strategy to defeat. In fact, if everyone is aware of this flaw in the game, the game is decided by turn order and nothing else.

    This broken mechanic ruins the game once discovered, its a real bummer.

    1. Western Empires (Eastern Empires) by 999 Games

    I’m going to make this short and sweet because I think Western and Easter Empires, also known together as Mega Civilization, also known as Advanced Civilization, also known as Civilization is one of the all-time classic “BIG” strategic civilization building games out there. It’s not just a game, but a staple of gaming history and Western and Eastern Empires are the modern remakes that only make minor adjustments to the original with nicer art and components, maintaining its core, classic formula.

    It’s not just a game, it’s an experience, but it does have one huge fucking flaw (pardon my French but I want to scream it) and that is that the game has player elimination.

    This game was originally designed in the early 80’s and here we are in 2024 and this core, fundamental and game-breaking flaw that will keep this off your table is still built into the game. In fact, Western and Eastern Empires lean into this and have created an official rule on how to “give up and go home” if you’re doing badly in the game.

    The issue is that the game can and does take about 9-12 hours to play, maybe even longer if you combine both games into a Mega civilization for up to 18 players. It’s a major event game which is fine, an event game is an event game, it takes a long time to play because that’s what events are. That is not a flaw, but if 4 hours into the event you can be put in a position where you are asked to leave… hey thanks for coming, go home! Fuck that….

    To me that is just unacceptable, I would never invite people to my house to play an all-day event game and then halfway through it eliminates them from the event because they sucked too much at it. It’s no problem that there are winners and losers, but to get eliminated from play, I can’t get over it.

    I can understand that in the 80’s board game design theory was in its infancy but what a missed opportunity for 999 games to correct what is undoubtedly the most destructive and game-breaking part of the game. I own Western Empires but I know that I will never put it on the table, not as long as this flaw exists. It’s crazy but it’s quite literally a game mechanic that is extremely toxic and rude to the players, aka, the guests at your house that came over to have fun.

    It is the unquestionable king of stupid shit ever put in a game, I can’t believe no one has corrected it over the last nearly 40 years of its existence.