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MY TOP 20 BEST GAMES OF ALL TIME 2022 EDITION

2022 was a very busy year for me and unfortunately, I probably played fewer board games this last year than I have since the late 90s. Still, I played quite a few compared to what I think most people actually play and of course, I made quite a few new discoveries that were worthy of consideration for this list.

This year’s list sees some shuffling around and a couple of new editions as a couple of games exit, but there were no shocking revelations. With that out of the way, let’s talk about some board games.

20. Root

Root is a curious little game that gained a massive following after its 2018 release resulting in quite a collection of expansions and a digital version by 2022 when I discovered it. It didn’t make my list last year, namely because it was a very new game to me at the time, but having played it quite a bit over the last year, mainly using the online app, I can safely say it earned its place on this list.

Root is effectively a quirky, asymmetrical war game in which players attempt to complete unique victory conditions depending on their chosen faction, which notably differ wildly from faction to faction.

The tricky element of Root that I think registers with gamers in addition to the very highly asymmetrical play is how it’s a game that you really can’t win alone, even though that is exactly your goal. To win in Root you must help and rely on the help of your opponents to put you in a position to win, yet, not help your opponent so much that they run away with the game and knock you out. In a sense, at times it’s a cooperative competition. A player that tries to strike out on their own and simply win by outplaying everyone is not likely going to be successful in this game, the reliance on your opponents to help you in your pursuit of victory is really a requirement to be in the running. This quandary is in a sense, the central theme of the game.

This combined with the highly asymmetrical gameplay gives Root it’s very unusual yet, addictive replayability, as well as this extreme balance that is provided by the player’s actions rather than the game system itself. Once you have played a few rounds with the same people, you start to realize who the good players are (people you help-less and oppose more) and who the weak players are (those who you help-more and rely on for their help to give you, your victory).

The interesting thing that I noted is that the more you play, the more you adapt your strategies depending on the current atmosphere of the group you are playing with, and this conversation about “who the threats at the table are” is constant, debated, and almost like a sort of Texas Hold’Em table where people accuse each other of bluffing. It’s very much a game of chicken.

I really didn’t love this game right out of the gate because the rules explanation for this game is a real hurdle, it requires that all players understand all factions well and since each faction has an entirely separate set of rules, the entry point is tough. Once you “get it” though, the more you play it, the better it gets. It’s a slow burn well worth the investment.

19. 1830: Railways and Robber Barons

This one is slowly slipping from my list, but not because my feelings about it have changed, but because this is one of those games that is sort of like sex. The first time is amazing, after that it’s a lot of fumbling about until you get really good at it, then it gets fun again. Well, it’s hard to coordinate a gaming group in such an effort and the game really suffers greatly when player skill levels are not synched up.

Simply put, when everyone is playing the game for the first time, everyone is making the same mistakes, it’s a complete cluster fuck and it’s super fun. Then you play the game a second and third time, and suddenly the game clicks for one or two people and they are crushing you mercilessly. After a while, you will have one or two players that are just unbeatable and you either give up or get used to losing.

R&R is an unforgiving meat grinder that has zero tolerance for foolishness. One bad move and you could spend a 6+ hour game being a victim under someone’s boot, worse yet, one weak player can cause another player to win while everyone else watches helplessly which can create some frustration among more veteran players.

That said, in a group where everyone gets it, where the game “clicks” for everyone, this game is just pure magic. So competitive and cutthroat, so intricate, so many ways to move and counter move, its capitalism at its finest.

I adore this game, but I struggle with the idea of trying to properly teach people the intricate, but absolutely necessary understanding of how this game executes. Learning the rules is one thing and that is complexity personified in on itself, but learning to play this game competitively, that takes real dedication and that process is kind of miserable, to be honest.


18. Star Trek Fleet Captains

Slipping a bit to the number 18 spot is my beloved Star Trek Fleet Captains. I rarely get to play this one in large part because there are not too many Star Trek fans in my gaming circle, but this year a buddy of mine indulged me and we dusted this beauty off and put it on the table.

All I can add to the review I did for Star Trek Fleet Captains back in 2015 is that It should have scored higher than a 3.9 and it would have, had it not been for some of the component quality issues I had and continue to have with the game. Let’s just say that things are a bit flimsy.

Where it really counts with this game and where it really nails it is in the theme and the gameplay. This is the entire Star Trek franchise in a box, it’s a game for fans clearly made by fans. All of the nuances of the shows and movies, crossing the barrier of the various generations of the franchise and connecting everything into a unique bundle of scenarios and variability are all here. What you end up with is a Star Trek game with endless replayability that really reaches into the depths of the franchise, all those things that make it tick.

I love this game, It has been on my top 10-20 list for many years and I just don’t see it going anywhere any time soon.

If you love Star Trek.. this is your game.


17. War Of The Ring

In a sense, War of the Ring is to Tolkeins Middle-Earth what Star Trek Fleet Captains is to Star Trek. Its Middle-Earth in the box, chock-full of amazing themes and gameplay, it is designed without question exclusively for Lord of the Rings fans.

To be honest the only reason this game isn’t higher on the list is that it’s just complicated enough that unless you play it with some regularity, you are going to forget the rules. I play this game once every year or so and each time I dust this bad boy off, I pretty much have to learn the rules from scratch which is a colossal pain in the ass.

It’s always worth it mind you and I would love to see this one hit the table way more often than it does, but it’s a two-player game with some very niche elements, not the least of which is the fact that its a solid 4-6 hour game and frankly, it’s not terribly balanced. I have played this game a lot over the years and never have I seen a free-people victory, doesn’t matter which side I play or how experienced the player I play against.

I know there is a 2nd edition of this one and my understanding is that they have addressed the balance issues, but frankly, I don’t have a problem with the balance issues and I don’t play it often enough to warrant buying a second copy. If you do get it, make sure you get the 2nd edition though, no reason not to.

This is a fantastic game, it falls into the realm of “experience”, more than a competitive game, it really tells great stories and I have never once regretted playing it, win or lose.

If you’re a Lord of the Rings, this is your game!


16. Tide of Irons

Historical War Gaming has one core issue and that is that most of the time, at least compared to modern game publishing, the components are weak. Like there is a context of historical war games of what qualifies as great components, but when you pull it out of that context and compare it to the heights of modern game publishing, historical war games look like trash (sorry I know I’m a mean guy!).

Tide of Irons however is a huge exception and while it would be counted as a “low complexity” historical war game to historical war gamers, even though it’s moderate to high complexity to the rest of the mass market world, it is in fact, a genuine and very historically rich, historical war game.

Tide of Irons is a tactical, scenario-based and squad-based war game. It uses some very traditional mechanics, in untraditional ways, has some very clever and extremely flexible components for near-infinite setups and… most importantly, it’s a total blast to play.

While highly complex in comparison to your typical modern board game, so far as games board games go, this is one you can pull out, teach someone and play without a lot of fussing about. It has increasingly complex scenarios that use more advanced rules and features as you progress in the game, but the scenario complexity starts very low and ramps up slowly. All and all, for an old dog like me, it’s a fairly straightforward war game with lots of strategic and tactical elements to make it fun and challenging.

It’s also visually spectacular and I think I love that about Tide of Irons more than anything. This is a game that rocks it on the table, it just looks amazing, giving it that rich thematic presentation that will get you in the mood. Who doesn’t love playing with little green men, it’s not someone I want to know!

15. Western Empires

Western Empires debuts on my list in the number 15 spot and I’m going to fess up here and now that despite this game being one of the toughest games to get to the table, so much so that so far I have only played it online, there is no question in my mind that it deserves to be here.

Based on the classic Advanced Civilization, a stone-cold classic from the Avalon Hill days, Western Empires is best described as “an experience” more than a game. This is an event game that takes you through the history of human civilization and like the foundation of human history, infuses human nature as a core feature of the game. You and your players aren’t just going to be playing the mechanics, this is very much about manipulating each other.

The core gameplay in Western Empires is player interaction, namely trading, negotiating, and deception and like human history, conflicts that arise are resolved on the battlefield in the cruelest of ways where war is won by the most un-sportsmen-like actors. The game has no equity, there are no balancing mechanics or attempts to ensure fairness, instead, there is just the cruelty of history and the ambitions of the players that drive the game forward.

This is a tough game where stuff will just happen to you outside of your control. Volcanos erupt and destroy cities, floods kill millions, rebellions crumble empires and all other manner of disasters natural or otherwise. All you can do as a player is navigate through the turbulence and hope that by the end of the game your civilization rises above the others in what I think is one of the most raw games I have ever played.

Western Empires is a long game, easily exceeding 10 hours and while the mechanics of the game are not complex, the nuance of player interaction is so deep that most players will see this as one of the most challenging games you could ever try to win. If you love huge, epic games for those big all-day events, this is without a shadow of a doubt in my mind, one of the best on the market. Combine Western Empires with Eastern Empires to make Mega Empires, a game that can house up to 18 players!

There is gaming and then there is Western Empires, that is all I’m going to say about that!


14. Dune Imperium

Dune Imperium is a Euro game and in my experience when it comes to how much I like Euro games, depends on when you ask me. They fluctuate and the primary reason is that they always feel hot to me until they are not. Dune Imperium however is a Euro that has really had a lot of staying power, I keep coming back to it over and over again and while it’s dropped on my top 20 list a bit from previous years, it’s still one of my favorite worker placement games.

The reason is that this is a game that comes with a really great theme, the use of worker placement here is not just about collecting resources and scoring points, but rather, its the fuel for the other far more important and decisive elements of the game, the deck building and combat elements. It’s also an incredibly tight game, I have never played a game of Dune Imperium that wasn’t super close and Dune has great versatility thanks to the great asymmetrical setups. It’s just a really well-designed game, easy to learn, yet very competitive.

This year we added the expansion, Rise of Ix to the mix which I thought, contrary to some of the reviews I have seen, added a lot of great elements to the game. It actually made the game a bit faster and allows players to specialize their strategy a bit more. The next expansion, Immortality is also out now and though I have not tried it yet, it does put more fuel in the tank for this one because I’m certainly excited to give that one a go as well.

It is worth mentioning that these expansions are luxuries and not necessities. Dune Imperium really doesn’t need these expansions, they are clearly made for fans who already love the game and just want to add some new playstyles into the mix.

Fantastic game, still my pick for one of the best games to come out in 2020.


13. The U.S. Civil War

I’m working on a detailed review of this new addition to my list, so more details coming soon, but The U.S. Civil War is another foray into the historical hex and counter-war game genre for me and it’s been a really fun ride.

This is a game, as the title suggests, about the entire Civil War. It’s a deeply meaningful and detailed grand strategy gaming experience in which two players play out one of the most defining conflicts in US history. It’s a moving armies on a map style of game, but the game has a way of presenting each side of the conflict with historically accurate problems to solve like the vulnerability of the coast, supply lines, the difficulty of the terrain, the variable availability of generals, the political atmosphere of the nation and of course the unpredictable results from the battlefield.

This is one of those games where you must think many moves ahead, and execute plans as you made them while trying to predict the intentions of your opponent. It’s uniquely balanced in that the South (Confederate Army) has little chance of actually winning the war, the North (Union Army) clearly has an advantage in the battlefield, but the North must execute a really successful war or the political situation at home may force a concession, which is how the South can win the game.

It’s historical, it’s strategic and it’s chaotic. Just a really great game, certainly not for the faint of heart, this is definitely a historical war game made for historical war gamers, specifically for historical war gamers interested in this particular conflict, so its quite niche, but if you’re a fan like me, this is the premier Civil War-war game, it’s a must own!


12. Peloponnesian War

Mark Hermans Peloponnesian War is without question one of my favorite solo games for many reasons, from the subject matter itself, clever mechanics, the unique way the game balances the solo experience and its outrageously challenging gameplay.

I have been trying to win at this game for over a year now and it still kicks my ass and each time it does, I learn, I adapt, I find new strategies to try and it all refreshes the experience. I find the game absolutely addictive, I just can’t put it down. I want to solve it and the crazy thing is that, I’m still just working on the first scenario, there are several others waiting in the wings for me so I don’t think this game is in any danger of slipping from this list anytime soon.

I will say that this game is so unique, such a white elephant even in the historical war gaming space that I find it impossible to recommend it even though every instinct in my body says that if you are a board game fan, of any kind, this is just one of those games you have to try. It’s just way out there in left field, the sort of game that results in either you seeing the absolute brilliance of it, or leaving you wondering, what the hell it actually is. Read my review for more details on this absolute gem of a game.


11. Lord of the Rings The Living Card Game

Lord of the Rings The Living Card Game has enjoyed a very long and very illustrious position on my Best Games list since its initial landing back in 2017, enjoying the number 1 spot in 2018 & 2019. In 2020 it finally slipped from its top position but it has remained and likely will remain on my list for a long time. It slips a few spots now, but only because I played it so goddamn much at this point, that I actually, for the first time since 2017 took a break from it.

I adore this game for so many reasons, but ultimately I just think it’s one of the best deck-building card games I have ever played and I have played a lot of them over the years. I have a complete collection and no matter how many sets have been released for it, each time I pick up a new one, I find myself back at the table completely engrossed in trying to figure out how to beat the latest challenges. This game is just so much fun, I have talked about it endlessly on this site and of course, you can read the review from 2016. I’m the content owner of the fantastic Lord of the Rings Companion and Lord of the Rings Campaign utility just in case there is any doubt about my fandom.

If you’re looking for a great deck builder that you can play solo or with friends, this is the one and if you happen to be a Lord of the Rings fan, I mean, this is a must-own game…period. This is my island game, no doubt about it.


10. Washington’s War

Washington’s War has one benefit that the other CDG’s (Card Driven Games) on this list don’t have which is that it’s very newbie friendly, meaning you can take a non-gamer or casual gamer, teach them how to play and they will be beating you at it pretty quickly. It’s a very easy game to pick up, while remaining exciting with a deep, meaningful strategy that will keep veteran players interested. It’s actually a really great introduction to a historical war games game and definitely one of the best CDG introductory games on the market.

Now that is the meta, but what makes Washington’s War really special is that it captures the revolutionary war in an abstract way, while maintaining the nuances of the historical period. It’s thematically rich and it houses mechanics that are very much standard in a lot of CDG’s and historical war games, so it has this very easy-to-recognize familiarity as you play the game, things work, as you kind of imagine they should.


9. Through The Ages: A New Story of Civilization

Through the Ages: A New Story of Civilization is game about human history from the stone age to the future age, but unlike Western Empires which it shares topics with, Through The Ages is very much a mechanical experience and a Euro one at that.

Through The Ages is a very long strategy game where you must not only go into it with a plan, but at each stage of the game, really with each decision in the game you are binding yourself with the impact of those choices resinating all the way to the final scoring round. It’s without question, one of the deepest strategy games I have ever played, one of those games that you can analyze endlessly.

Despite this fact, there is a certain level of randomness in the game, so even though you can walk into it with a strategy in mind, you are also placed on the defensive quite often and will need to scramble and make do with what becomes available to you rather than what you really want. This gives the game incredible replayability because no two games will ever be alike and no amount of theory crafting is ultimately going to matter as you approach this games incredible dynamics. Not that this knowledge will keep you from theory crafting, but ultimately it’s as much a game about planning as it is reacting.

It’s so robust, so challenging and so well thought out that it’s no wonder that Through The Ages has enjoyed one of the longest stretches in the top 10 on boardgamegeek of any game ever released. Even today, nearly two decades of being on the list it still manages to be in the number 13 spot as of this writing, a testament to its amazing design.

Through The Ages has a great digital version which makes this game a lot more accessible and I highly recommend that if you’re a fan of this one to get that, it’s a worthwhile investment to get to play this gem more frequently. For me personally, I love to see this one one the table, it is one of the best games ever made.


8. Eclipse: Second Dawn For The Galaxy

I’m currently writing an article series about space civilization-building games (HERE is part I) and obviously, Eclipse is one of the contenders. When I was building this list however I knew both Twilight Imperium and Eclipse would make it onto the list, but I ultimately had to decide which one would rank higher and which lower.

Now before I explain why Eclipse has been one-upped by Twilight Imperium, let me just say that Eclipse: Second Dawn For The Galaxy is an absolutely fantastic game, capturing the genre from a very unique angle that deserves all of the accolades this latest edition of Eclipse has gotten.

The way the game gets right into the action, the pacing of the game throughout, fantastic combat, amazing technology and resource management, it really just nails it in so many ways. Frankly, in almost all cases I would actually recommend Eclipse over Twilight Imperium to the overwhelming majority of gamers. You could say from a mechanical and modern design perspective, it’s the better game.

So why does it play second fiddle to Twilight Imperium for me? The answer is simple, player interaction. When it comes to big, epic, event-level games from which both of these games plant their roots, player interaction is a key factor for me. Despite some really amazing mechanics, the level of player interaction in Eclipse is strictly regulated to mechanical execution. You are not going to be negotiating, there is no politics, and there isn’t much in the way of making deals with and then betraying players, at least not if you are paying attention to how the game executes.

Despite being part of the “event” genre of games, Eclipse is actually a quite short game and this is a game about scoring points and there simply isn’t enough nuance or time in the game to fumble around with politics and negotiation. You do what you need to do to score points, you start doing it from round one and by the time player interaction would make any difference, the game is over and you are counting VP’s to see who won.

This is very much a Euro version of a civilization-building game, it’s about managing resources, executing mechanics, calculating odds, predicting actions and so on. All good stuff mind you and it makes for an excellent game, but it just lacks that human interaction factor upon which games like Twilight Imperium are based and for me personally this feels like a missing element in the game.

Eclipse makes up for this in countless ways and it didn’t make it on this list because I felt sorry for it, Eclipse earns its stripes, it’s an amazing game, it’s just no Twilight Imperium.


7. Twilight Imperium

Twilight Imperium has been on my best-of list as long as I have kept one which at this point is nearly a decade. Now in its 4th edition, this space opera remains the premium grand strategy civilization building in space game on the market and while there have been plenty of challengers, I’m yet to find one to dethrone it, though arguably Eclipse: Second Dawn For The Galaxy came pretty bloody close and might just one day surpass it.

I think the crux of it is that Twilight Imperium has a strategic depth that no other game in this genre can touch. It’s a game of subtle moves, of grand plans and of player-driven politics and interaction. TI4 draws on the personalities of the players and infuses it with gameplay in a way that very few games do and to me this is a mark of a true masterpiece.

The game mechanics in 4th edition have been perfected to such a degree that I actually rejected the expansion for the game (The Prophecy of Kings) because I felt that it was messing with that perfection. Some swear by the expansion, but for me, Vanilla 4th edition Twilight Imperium is the mecca, the final and best version of the game, not to be messed with.

This is a 6-10 hour monster, clearly an event game and so it doesn’t see a lot of table time and in a way, this is the one thing Eclipse has over Twilight Imperium and why I believe someday I might get to a point where I admit defeat and allow Eclipse to rise past Twilight Imperium, but it isn’t going to be on the 2023 list, better luck next year Eclipse!


6. Empires: Age of Discovery

Empires: Age of Discovery is to me, from a design perspective, the single best worker placement game ever made. It combines a great theme, very clever use of the worker placement mechanics that go beyond simply plop and score and boasts an incredibly tight competitive atmosphere. This is just really good gaming and really good game design.

It’s very easy to teach and learn, looks absolutely amazing on the table, it’s paced perfectly keeping everyone engaged and doesn’t overstay its welcome, really hitting that sweet spot in terms of playtime.

I did a review of this one way back in 2005 and to be honest while I agree with the score for the most part, one thing haunts me about this review and that is my complaints about the deluxe edition cost vs. component quality. I was being quite harsh and have since really changed my tune about the value of this game. This deluxe version of the game I think is well worth the 100 dollars I spent on it, but I suppose 100 dollars was a lot more money in 2015 than it is today.

To me, if you’re a fan of worker placement games, this is a no-brainer, they don’t get any better than this.


5. Caesar: Rome vs. Gaul

A new edition to the list, the impressive Caesar: Rome vs. Gaul makes its debut in my top 5 and I can’t help but feel this game might deserve to be higher on the list.

This game initially hit me kind of so-so. I didn’t love it right out of the gate and I saw some flaws with it compared to some of the other CDG’s I was playing at the time, but like a fine wine, this thing aged for the better with time. Looking back at my initial review of Caesar: Rome vs. Gaul where I scored it a 3.85 I feel like I probably should have played it more before doing the review. I think it deserved a bit better, not that I disagree with anything I wrote about the game back then as compared to today, but I should have scored it higher.

I think the main difference after dozens of plays for me has been that this game is so much more diverse and dynamic than I first thought. Certainly, the number of different strategies and the way some of the more chrome-rich mechanics affect the game and how they can be used as part of a larger long-term strategy are things that at that point when I wrote the review had not clicked for me the way they have today. Having played it quite a bit over the last year, boy let me tell you, this game is a veritable forest of awesome and dynamic gameplay. It has so much more depth than I initially gave it credit for.

While I still stand by the fact that Imperial Struggle is my favorite CDG, this is a taste thing more than a design thing. I consider Caesar: Rome vs. Gaul one of the most well-designed CDG’s on market today. It hits the historical and thematic elements with precision even within its abstraction, it’s challenging with player skill playing an important role in deciding outcomes while bringing that chaos factor that makes card and dice games so much fun.

It is burdened with a bit of a learning curve but unlike games like Twilight Struggle, which has a tough climb for players to learn to play it well, Caesar: Rome vs. Gaul’s learning curve is in learning the rules of the game. Once you get past that hump which I would argue is moderate, learning to play it well comes naturally and relatively easily. There is a fundamental core to the game that makes it easy to spot potential, viable strategies. I find that is a preferable setup as finding someone to play the game that is ready to get past the mechanical learning curve of Caesar: Rome vs. Gaul is a lot easier than finding someone who is ready to put in the 30+ games it takes to become competent in something like Twilight Struggle.

Amazing game, that keeps getting better the more I play it, one of the biggest surprises for me of the last couple of years.


4. Paths of Glory

Paths of Glory is to me, THE, premiere historical war game, it is to historical war games what Pandemic or Settlers of Catan is to the general board gaming community. It’s just one of those games that, until you have played it, you can’t really claim you know historical war gaming, it is a fundamental must-own and play.

That said, it actually is quite a niche, but that shouldn’t be surprising to historical war gamers, quite literally every game in the historical war game genre is a niche thing in most respects. World War I is a very specialized topic, with unique nuances and context that create very unusual strategic and tactical challenges. That could actually be said about almost all historical war games as well, but I think Paths of Glory’s execution is done with such precision and the game mechanics are so fine-tuned, I can easily put this game into the category of a masterpiece.

In this game you are not just contending with the historical complexities of the period both on and off the battlefield, but it’s done in a “what if” setup which to me is the absolute best way to ensure historical war games don’t lose their luster over multiple plays. What if Italy shows up late to the war, what if the Americans join the war earlier rather than later.. so and so forth. The game allows for the adaptations of history but in believable ways, meaning the things that are a-historically possible, really could have actually happened that way.

That however is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the true greatness of this game. The attrition warfare, the subtle manipulation of resources, the intricate point-to-point map and the absolutely engrossing way unit positions play into the strategy of the game all combine to make this one of the greatest historical war games in existence.

Absolutely adore this game and it’s a great mid-way point for the education of a fellow would-be historical war gamer, it has some complexity but this is a game that with a bit of dedication can be learned and learned to play well by most people.


3. Empire Of The Sun

If you read my blog even in passing, it is no secret that I’m a huge Mark Herman fan, the designer of Empire of the Sun and that I consider Empire of the Sun his Mona Lisa, a true masterpiece.

My biased love for the history of the war in the Pacific surely plays a role here, but really Empire of the Sun is a combination of everything I love about historical war gaming all rolled up into mechanical perfection.

Empire of the Sun is a grand strategy war game in the pacific on an operational level, it’s a card-driven game, played on a large hex map that really focuses on large-scale military movements and reactions. The game is very intricate, without question one of the most challenging games I have ever learned to play, but the strategic depth, variability and dynamics of the game are so well the time investment this game demands.

Empire of the Sun has a really great solo bot as well which means that you can take your time learning the rules, really getting the nuances down before you consider challenging opponents and thanks to a very robust community supporting this game you will find no issues finding an opponent online.

That said the personal, one on one, the experience of playing this one on the table is absolutely unmatched. This is a timeless classic that earns its accolades, everything you have heard about it is true. It’s deep, and complex with a steep learning curve and it’s an absolute joy to suffer through it to get to the heart of this beast. When the lights come on and you get to that point where you know how to play, it’s as good as board gaming can ever be.


2. Imperial Struggle

I place Imperial Struggle in the number two spot of this list without reservation, I didn’t even blink really. This is one of my favorite games to play and it really isn’t for any particular mechanic or thematic reason, this is just one of those games that you play and love and.. well it doesn’t really matter why.

That said I feel like I owe some explanation and so I will be brief and to the point. Imperial Struggle is a culmination of everything that makes CDG Influence games like Twilight Struggle, Caesar. Rome vs. Gaul and Washington’s War great done with exceptional style and mechanical brilliance that simply results in this one being the best of the bunch. It is one of the most competitive and challenging games in this genre I have ever played. It has charisma, it’s absolutely gorgeous on the table and despite reluctance to try it coming from almost everyone I have ever taught it to, I am yet to meet someone who played it and didn’t instantly love it.

In my review in 2021 of Imperial Struggle I did point out that I didn’t think Imperial Struggle would cross over to the mainstream and it really hasn’t. It tragically sleeps on boardgamegeek.com in the 542 spot which makes this without question one of the most underrated games on the geek to date. It’s absolutely criminal that this game does not get more love given the fact that it’s the offspring of Twilight Struggle, in my not-so-humble opinion, a far inferior game.

In my eyes, your board game collection is incomplete with Imperial Struggle in it.

1. War Room

To no so surprise at all, War Room is my number 1 game on the best-of list for the second year in a row and frankly I can’t imagine a future in which this won’t always be true.

Check out my preview and my review of this epic grand strategy world war II game. I don’t know how else I could possibly praise this one short of saying, it is everything I love about this hobby in an oversized and very elaborate box.

I love this game and true love lasts forever!

Exits & Honorable Mentions

A few games exit the list and there are a couple that were up for consideration that I would at the very least call honorable mentions.

Shogun (Dirk Henn version) has been on my last lingering in the backfield for many years and frankly for good reason. I love this game, that crazy dice tower is just so much fun, in particular in the context of a think strategy war game. It was a tough fight between Root and Shogun, to be frank, I chose Root mostly just to have something new on the list, I don’t know that I believe that Root is a better game than Shogun. Its actually quite brilliant.

B-17 Flying Fortress Leader also exits the list, though I was a bit more sure about this one than some of the others. I love this game, but it’s so niche, it’s purely solo and honestly, though I play it every year like clockwork, I think this is just one of those ME games. I love the Leader and Field Commander series of games, they are a sort of almost alternative pastime for me. Field Commander Napoleon leaves the list for the same reason.

Ikusa makes an exit and probably should have quite a long time ago. This one lives on nostalgia for me and though I haven’t played it in a couple of years and really do appreciate it, it’s hard to justify a game for a best-of list you don’t really play.

Three major contenders for the list I discovered during last years annual big board gaming weekend, in no particular order, Hansa Teutonica by Pegasus Spiele 2020, Smartphone Inc by Cosmodrome Games (2018) and The King Is Dead by Osprey Games (2020).

Hansa Teutonica is just such a really clever Euro game that really struck a chord with me and I honestly think the only reason it didn’t make my list is that I have only played it twice and I don’t own it, so little opportunity to get it to the table. I think it will make an appearance at this years big board gaming weekend and if it leaves a similar impression the next time I play it, it might not only make it to the list, but into my collection as well.

Smartphone I have played several times and honestly, even as I write this I struggle to justify not putting it on my list somewhere. It really is one of the smartest (no pun intended) game designs I have seen in years. Super fun, really competitive and just brilliant from a game design perspective.

The King is Dead I think has so much potential, it just needs more table time to make the list. This is a game that I put in the vein of Condottiere, which is also a very difficult to pass on consideration for the list. It has that, my brain hurts, an element to it that is both addictive and inspiring. Really enjoyed this one and I think one of these days I’m going to make a top 10 games that make you think list for which both The King is Dead and Condottiere I think would do really well on.

I hope you enjoyed the list, see you next year!

Best of List, Role-Player Game Reviews

D&D Theory: List of 10 Games that can replace 5th edition D&D

I thought the timing for writing an article about potential RPG’s you could get into to replace 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons is quite perfect. Lots of people are upset with Wizards of the Coast after their completely disastrous handling of the franchise in the recent year and recent weeks in particular. I think a lot of people are looking around to see what else is out there and while I already have plenty of lists and information about other RPG’s on this site, I wanted to make one specifically for 5e players looking for alternatives.

Now one consideration for this list includes “logic” for the replacement of 5th edition. What I mean is that I don’t think “I’m mad at Wizards of the Coast” is really a reason someone might stop playing 5th edition, but I do think there is a wide array of logical reasons why a group, DM or individual player might. As such this list isn’t just about games that replicate 5th edition as a replacement but includes other RPG’s that do certain elements of the tabletop experience in a more focused and better way than 5th edition. As such I have included a “If you don’t like….” logic section for each game that describes an element of 5th edition you might not like and how the listed game does that particular element better. Hopefully, this helps to make the list more focused.

Enjoy the list and good luck in your hunt for a replacement for 5th edition D&D. Note that while this is a top 10 list, I have not put them in order of quality or anything like that. These are all great games for different reasons so it’s just a list of 10 games rather than a top 10 list of games to replace 5th edition D&D.

Pathfinder 2nd Edition

If you don’t like….

If you don’t like a game that has poor rules coverage and constantly asks you to make rulings where you wish there was rules coverage, I think Pathfinder 2nd edition is a great choice.

I think if you’re talking about replacing 5th edition Dungeon and Dragons, the most common, rightfully so, piece of advice you will get is to switch to Pathfinder 2nd edition. I think this is more of a competitor driven advice than necessarily good advice, which is not to say its bad advice. It really depends on what aspects of 5th edition you enjoy as to whether or not this will be the right choice for you.

Be warned that while Pathfinder 2nd edition does a lot of elements a lot better than 5th edition, it is a very focused game with a very specific style of play built into it that is not terribly flexible if you want to focus on other elements and styles of play outside of its focus.

Pathfinder first and foremost is an incredibly robust and option-rich game with an extremely focused effort on balance and mechanization of gameplay. What that really means is that this game has massive rules coverage, has very heavy character optimization which results in a focus on the execution of rules rather than rulings premise. 5th edition D&D is quite a bit different in this regard, many of 5th edition rules assumed a lot of D&D intervention and hand waving of rules in favor of narrative storytelling.

This is an adventure game in which any action you take has a rule associated with it and character options that can improve that effort. Now this does not mean you always execute every rule in the game when you do something, it just means you have the coverage, the option as a DM, to include some sort of execution when players do anything. Hand waving is certainly a part of the game, but unlike 5th edition, hand waving is rarely done out of necessity because of an absence of rules, it’s done as a preference. The rules always have your back in Pathfinder 2nd edition and this is one of the really distinct differences between the two games.

There is a firm consistency in how actions and execution work in PF2nd, rules are very explicit and clear and there is little left to interpretation. The consistency of the rules is such that once you get used to the system, you can pretty much always guess how an element works and be correct, so despite a 600+ core rulebook, most of the rules work exactly as you expect based on the precedence of the standardization of rules and the purpose of outlining each one is for unique circumstances and cases of specific action to ensure you are rarely put in a situation where you must rule something yourself.

This however is only a small part of Pathfinder 2nd edition despite it being a core feature and while the ruleset is incredibly consistent, balanced and easy to use, the best part of Pathfinder is that it comes with an incredibly detailed fantasy setting with a rich history and total support for it via its mechanics. Every class, race as well as unique fantasy trope, like spell sources, magic items etc.. are built into the world and have an explanation in terms of where in this world that thing comes from.

Its a wonderfully satisfying thing for a DM when a player picks Goblin as an ancestry for example and you can look up where goblins come from, what is there culture like, what are some of the unique aspects that feed into and bring to the table, the narrative of that race. It’s so well fleshed out, and well written and there are so many fantasy/story rabbit holes to crawl into it’s amazing. It all brings Pathfinders Golarion setting to life and makes it feel real. You have this really firm basis on which the game is set and while of course, you have the option of using homebrew or other settings with Pathfinder, Golarion is so well done, so perfectly matched up with the content of this system you are likely to discover that you won’t want to do this extra work. It’s a fantastic setup.

Finally and probably most importantly there is absolutely no question in my mind that Pathfinder Adventure Paths (adventures written for Pathfinder) are absolutely top-notch quality. Paizo is an absolute legend when it comes to creating adventures and campaigns for their game and for this reason alone it’s worth making the switch in my opinion.

One great example is Kingmaker, one of Pathfinder’s premiere adventure paths that have players not only going on a grand adventure of exploration but establishing their own kingdom. This one was so popular it got its own video game, arguably one of the best CRPG’s to come out since the Baulders Gate series.

One additional sort of bonus with Paizo and Pathfinder 2nd edition is that they achieved a long time ago the communities desired inclusivity of the game and developed the game with a modern morale compass that has escaped Wizards of the Coast for so long. Paizo is in a word, a prime example of what a modern company’s political stance should be, which is simply to do the right thing without being asked to and without making it a political stance constantly brought up as a marketing ploy. They simply just act right without all the morale signaling and politics unlike Wizards of the Coasts that is not only constantly shoving politics in your face, but also constantly screwing it up and releasing racist and sexist crap in their books despite any messaging.

Pathfinder 2nd edition is a great game and Paizo is a fantastic company that stands with the player community. They understand their audience, they understand their community and they know how to support their game. Pathfinder 2nd edition is without question the most well-supported game in the market today.

Castles & Crusades

If you don’t like….

The idea of switching systems and having it impact your style of play as a 5e player or DM, Castles & Crusades is the perfect system for you. It is very much in the same style & vein of play as 5th edition with an incredibly robust and flexible game system that allows for a very easy transition from 5e.

While the 5th edition community may not necessarily be up to speed on the evolutions of the game since the original 1st edition AD&D, it is a fact that D&D branched off into different directions since those early days. I think most might not be aware that the true descendant of the original AD&D game is Castles & Crusades. In fact, Gary Gygax himself played Castles & Crusades and it is actually the true successor to Dungeons and Dragons, not 2nd or 3rd edition D&D which evolved the game into the modern 5th edition game you are familiar with. Still, while the mechanics certainly differ, the core premise is the same.

In fact, in an alternative timeline where the franchise was not bought out by Wizards of the Coast, today everyone would know Castles & Crusades simply as D&D.

Upon opening the player’s handbook the first thing that will strike you about the game is how familiar and very D&Dish it is. This is a game that stuck to the classic tropes of the game but don’t mistake it as an OSR game because it most certainly is not part of the OSR even though many will claim it to be. This is a modernly designed game, that takes into account all of the evolutions of D&D and the RPG hobby as a whole in its design. In its 8th printing, this game has continued to be supported since 2004 and though it too has evolved over time, it has also remained consistent and compatible with all material that has ever been printed for it as Troll Lord Games is dedicated to creating a stable and consistent gaming environment for its fans long term.

Castles & Crusades plays as you probably already imagine D&D to be, its going to be oddly familiar if you have played 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th edition D&D and this is because much of the evolution of the hobby has been hit and miss with the Wizards of the Coast versions of the game, while Castles & Crusades has hand-picked the things that have been established to work well and fine-tuned those elements over decades of focused testing.

Like Paizo’s Pathfinder, Castles & Crusades has a default built-in setting called Aihrde, but unlike Pathfinder this setting is sort of intentionally designed to be a bit of a generic D&D world to allow players a tremendous amount of customization. Castles & Crusades is incredibly flexible, in fact, you can take any classic D&D setting and use C&C as a rule system with little if any additions or changes to be made to make it fit. It is very organically designed to be D&D and as such, all of the core races and classes you are accustomed to are there as you would expect.

More than that though Castles & Crusades via expanded books has continually made sure that those elements in official D&D settings that are created for those settings are also released in expansion books for C&C. Meaning there are books like the Crusader Companion which are available for free that give you races like Dragonborn, classes like Berserker and concepts like Multi-Classing. Castles & Crusades has kept up with all of the modern fantasy tropes and though they do not include these in the base game, ensuring D&D has a clear and very classic starting point, these expansions allow the game to be expanded easily to include any sort of fantasy you want to run. Everything I wished Wizards of the Coast would do with D&D.

Castles & Crusades is also a very open-source game, meaning the licensing of the game is designed to support the community and 3rd party efforts and this aspect of the game is fully leveraged making this an extremely well-supported game both officially and unofficially. Whatever you are looking for, whether it be rules on mass combat, kingdom management, expanded spell systems, alternative combat systems, conversions of classic adventures, system conversions… whatever it is, you name it and Castles & Crusades has your back. What makes the C&C community so great is that most of this material is available for free, which includes the Players Handbook itself. For example, there is a 5th edition conversion guide if you wish to take your 5e game and convert it to Castles and Crusades available for free.

I think the thing that makes Castles & Crusades really special in the market is the high level of quality of the books and the content itself. This is not a company that just splashes source books willy nilly and while the library is large at this point, this is because the game has been in operation under the same, stable and consistent system for over 2 decades. The result is consistently high-quality content that you can rely on.

Castles & Crusades is without question one of the premier systems and comes with the highest of recommendations to 5e players looking for an alternative mainly because switching from 5e to Castles and Crusades is not going to ask you to change your style of play.

Forbidden Lands

If you don’t like….

If you are finding D&D adventure modules and running pre-made stories that tend to rely on rails for the players to stay on a bit dull and you like your game to be gritty and tough, Forbidden Lands is a great choice.

I have talked about the award-winning Forbidden Lands many times on this blog and there is a very solid reason for it. It is a hidden gem in the rough waters that often accompany the OSR.

Let’s be honest here for a minute. The issue with the OSR is that, in part at least, it’s about playing old-school editions of the game and while that may strike a note with many, for 5e players, going back to playing B/X or AD&D isn’t exactly what they are looking for. 5e players like modernization and that is not only ok, but arguably it’s to be encouraged. Not everyone shares in the nostalgia of playing the classics as they were, much of the D&D community is forward-looking and Forbidden Lands is one of the few OSR games that says “hey we like old school gaming, we just don’t like old school rules”.

Forbidden Lands however is more than just a throwback to the classic play style with modern rules, it is a uniquely focused game that targets a very specific sub-genre of D&D play. Namely, the concept of the hex-crawl and survival D&D built are the premise of emergent gameplay.

In Forbidden Lands, you and your players are living in a kind of post-apocalyptic area and era of this world. The dust of the tumultuous past has settled and you are asked to venture out into the unknown and forgotten lands to make your own way.

In this game you explore the world that is dynamically generated by the DM using a very clever set of rules which generate what I would call emergent gameplay. Meaning that even the DM doesn’t fully know what is going to happen and since this is very much an open-world game by design, everything that happens is entirely driven by the players own motivations. What do they want to do in this wild open space? Whatever that is, the execution of that becomes the story of the game and everything about the game is designed to support that endeavor.

Now Forbidden Lands itself does have a back story so in a sense, eventually, you uncover enough information about the world around you to pursue what is effectively a “main campaign” of the game itself. So while the whole place is a dynamically generated playground for the players to pursue any endeavors they like, the games story does have a resolution and all of the dynamic content of the game that is generated in the course of play is tied into this piece of the game.

While the game is not a d20 system that 5e players might be familiar with, it does boast Free League Games premiere custom mechanic on which many other great games are based like my personal favorite, Aliens RPG. It’s a simple, very abstract system that will be a snap to learn and yet is incredibly entertaining as it relies on more than simply pass-fail states.

All and all I think Forbidden Lands is one of those games you must experience to appreciate fully but for the DM’s out there looking for something interesting to run, this game is as much fun to run as it is to play. The story writing here is absolutely amazing and the setting itself, dark, ominous and full of mystery, is everything you want in a great RPG experience.

One of my favorite games to come out this side of the century.

The One Ring

If you don’t like….

If you have grown tired of the generic, anything-goes fantasy that 5e has grown into and want something with a classic fantasy feel that is focused on role-playing, The One Ring, based on Tolkien’s middle-earth is going to get you there!

The One Ring is simply, Lord of the Rings the RPG, but it’s so much more than that simply because it’s a game that understands on what it is based and mechanically aligns itself to ensure your adventures play out like the Lord of the Rings books and movies.

This game has an incredible focus on making sure that middle-earth in all its epic glory comes to life at the table, not only by having a very strong game mechanic that really pushes for this to be true but because The One Ring has some of the best writers in the business working on it.

Ruins of The Lost Realms is a taste of what I mean here, we are talking about work that fits the term literature in my opinion, setting you up to have adventures that players don’t even realize are possible in an RPG. You are going to feel things as The One Ring focuses very heavily on the premise of RP with the G taking a bit of a back seat.

The hallmark of a great RPG is that it’s supported by well-written adventure modules and Ruins Of The Lost Realm is sooooo much more than just a great adventure module, it is so well-written, it deserves a place right next to The Silmarillion.

In short, The One Ring, as you would hope it would be, is focused squarely on storytelling and on personal relationships all with a backdrop of epic, world-shaking, questing that makes the players feel like they are a character in the Fellowship of The Ring. It does this organically, in a way where even players that are ordinarily not the story-focused kind will find themselves sucked into this one, not unlike what happens when you binge-watch the latest hit from Netflix.

To me the One Ring is the definition of what an RPG should be, it puts you right in the middle of one of the greatest fantasy stories ever told and hands you the reigns. Easily the single best RPG to come out 2022, I dare say no RPG fan should miss this one, especially a Lord of the Rings fan. Grab that starter box and check it out!

A Song of Ice and Fire

If you don’t like….

If you are finding D&D to be a bit unrealistic, with too much focus on adventures and not enough focus on the premise of believable characterization and wish to play something more gritty, A Song of Ice and Fire is for you.

Let’s be a little frank about D&D. The premise of the game is that you are a supposed “adventurer”, a bit of a do-gooder, that goes around exploring dungeons, fighting monsters and generally doing things no actual person, even in a fantasy setting is likely to volunteer to do. It sort of requires a level of suspension of disbelief in the context of a fantasy that I think is very often a bit of a stretch, almost cartoony.

Modern fantasy writing like the Game of Thrones saga is a good example of what happens when you look at a fantasy world from a more realistic perspective and use human nature as a guide to creating a world in which people act more like you might expect them to.

Based on George R.R. Martin’s modern classic world, A Song of Ice and Fire is dark, gritty, violent and sometimes a bit too real, but for fans, despite the need to sometimes look away, we love it and Song of Ice and Fire the RPG brings all of that to the table.

In what I can only describe as one of the most unique setups in RPG’s today, in Song of Ice and Fire you and your friends not only create characters all belonging to one of the houses in the story, but part of the game is creating and managing that house yourself.

This is a game that puts you in the driver’s seat in the political struggles in the Game of Thrones story where you try to raise your house to prominence by participating in the cutthroat Game of Thrones where you win or you die.

Beautifully designed to suit the gritty nature of the game world, this is a game where fighting is absolutely lethal and a last resort, while simultaneously the political stories are not much refuge as they are equally brutal. It’s a game in which you are either a wolf or a sheep, but of course the game encourages you to be a wolf and so you struggle against an endless barrage of political maneuvering, some of your own creation, others thrust upon you.

There is never a dull moment in this game as it provides the DM with so much ammunition to keep the stories going, not only that, you can do all of it in the backdrop of the story of the unfolding setting itself, changing events and creating your own version of the Game of Thrones story.

My friends and I played this one a few years back and to this day we talk about the politics, people and events of that game. This game just has a way of imprinting on you as it plays out in such a vivid and believable fashion.

Absolutely adore this one, I would only caution players and DM’s that this is definitely a far cry from an “adventuring” game. It’s a political thriller, the kick-down-doors and kill-everything approach simply does not work here. It’s a game where finesse, political strategy and calculated moves must be executed with surgical precision, its a game for planners. It’s wonderful and painful at the same time, but this game creates stories you will not soon forget.

Alternity RPG

If you don’t like…

Many D&D players that are currently looking around for an alternative, may be doing so simply because they have grown tired of the fantasy genre as a whole and a natural switch is to check out science fiction. If that describes you, let me tell you about the greatest science-fiction game ever made, Alternity!

Before I do that, however, let’s get on the same page. Fantasy and Science-Fiction are very related genres, in fact, to a point, they are the same. Both genres were born from the same place, arguably, the first science-fiction-fantasy book ever written was Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and for a long time after that, the difference between what is fantasy and what is science fiction was a murky construct that would only be split decades later.

Now with that said I bring you Alternity, a game that not only is the precursor to the entire d20 system but may in fact, despite decades of D20-based games, be the best example of the system done right. This well-oiled machine was designed by TSR and Wizards of the Coast alumni Bill Slavicsek and Richard Baker and is without question in my mind one of the best science-fiction RPG’s ever published and remains so to this day.

It is designed to allow a GM to create every kind of science-fiction setting from the ground up from post-apocalyptic wastelands to space operas, from Blade Runner-style future earth to X-File style horror-mystery science-fiction. It is all-inclusive and does it with such elegance and style it pains me that this final TSR release which in my opinion is one of the best RPG’s to come out of TSR ever, which includes all versions of D&D, went under most people’s radars.

This game is mechanically a fusion of a skill-based and class-based system allowing for maximum customization and it boasts clear rules for all of the major science-fiction tropes from Cybergear, Mutations, Hacking, Space Combat, Space Exploration, Virtual Reality and even Magic.

There is literally nothing you can think of in the vein of science-fiction or fantasy that cannot be done with this system and it can go from high end super powered science-fiction to gritty reality with only the most minor adaptation, all work done for you and laid out in the Gamemasters Guide.

Not only is Alternity the unquestionable king of science-fiction in RPG’s, it also has two of the best non-franchise science-fiction settings ever written made just for it. Darkmatter, an X-Files-style alien conspiracy setting and Stardrive, a massive, Star Wars-level space opera that is based on very gritty and believable predictions about the future.

Stardrive, in my humble opinion, remains one of the best settings ever written for any RPG. How this is not a movie at this point I don’t know, it’s a masterpiece.

I love this game and have been using it for the better part of 2 decades and while there are many fantastic science-fiction offerings out there today like the amazing Aliens RPG (more on that later) and the highly thematic Star Wars Edge of the Empire, to me Alternity is the best of the best, the king of kings, the ultimate and only RPG true science-fiction fans should even be considering if you are going to consider sci-fi as an alternative to 5th edition D&D.

Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea

If you don’t like…

If you have grown tired of your games feeling like easy walk-throughs for your players and you want to present them with a tough and gritty challenge there are actually quite a few RPG’s to pick from that do this, in fact, it could be a list of its own. The reason I think Hyperborea stands out when assuming 5th edition players is that this game is what a fantasy RPG might look like if a modern gamer tried to create a classic D&D clone with one exception (I will get to that in a minute).

Technically Hyperborea falls into the OSR space as, at its core, this is a B/X based game, but unlike B/X there are some adjustments made to the setting to make some of the B/X concepts that might offend modern gamers a bit more palatable and better suited. More importantly, it’s a bit crunchier and feels much more complete than B/X ever did.

For example, this is a game where you simply choose a class, no race selection (same as B/X rules) but it’s because this is a human-centric world and while other “things” exist in the world, as players, you play only humans. Now there are different cultures of humans so you can select your race in the sense of choosing a unique human culture like Amazon, Kelts or Vikings for example, but you aren’t picking Elves, Dwarves or Halflings.

You get a very wide selection of classes and sub-classes to pick from with a good level of crunch, 22 in total, each with a unique set of abilities that will ensure every character is unique and each class is built into the context of the setting which itself is a kind of almost post-apocalyptic medieval fantasy with some science-fiction elements in the backdrop.

What makes this a great transition game for 5e players is that it takes into account the sort of focal preferences that modern gamers enjoy. It’s a simple-to-learn, easy to get into game and It focuses on rulings over rules, while offering the brevity of crunchy mechanics so that you have something to lean on. I would describe it as having the exact same amount of crunch as 5e.

Personally for me, what I love about it and really what I ultimately love about most RPG’s is that it takes a story-first sort of approach and does so by leading by great example with the setting. That is the sort of game that speaks to me. Hyperborea, the default setting for this game, just hits so many unique fantasy tropes, approaches fantasy a bit out of the box and has some really fantastic presentation so all of the material is easy to absorb and make your own.

It’s what I would call for 5e players, a really great rut buster. Like if your finding your 5e games are becoming uninspired if you are seeing patterns emerging and you want to do something different, switching to a setting that really re-writes fantasy as you know it is a really great way to break that cycle and Hyperborea not only does that, but provides you with what I think 5e players will find is a very familiar yet fun new system to learn that produces this very gritty reality. This IS D&D, don’t doubt it, but it’s got a bit of an edge to it.

Now I should mention one of the drawbacks here and that is by default, Hyperborea uses THAC0 (combat matrix) as its primary combat resolution system with descending armor class. I don’t know why the publisher chose this method over the much simpler attack bonus, ascending armor class structure, it’s a mistake and they shouldn’t have done it. Not that this is a deal breaker for me and frankly, it’s not that difficult to flip the math yourself but, if you think THAC0 is stupid and I agree with you, you have to decide for yourself if this is going to be a deal breaker or not. It is what I would call a chink in the armor of what is otherwise a fantastic game.

On the plus side, the system is used to great effect and Hyperborea really captures the gritty battle sequence with perfection. It’s a unique combat system that is based on B/X but expanded upon to try to bring some realism to the fight with some welcome cinematic bits. Melee combat in this game is vicious and it will create that much-needed stress and sense of danger that 5e is so often missing with consistency.

In my book Hyberborea is a real gem in the rough, it’s definitely a bit edgy and will require some know-how by the GM to make good use of the system, so there is a learning curve here, but it’s got a crunch in all the right places and has really good coverage for elements of fantasy adventure you really need including more expansive topics like Naval Battles, Mass Combat and Sieges, so you can play this game in different scales at different times. Just a really well-written, well-thought-out system that really brings gritty fantasy to life.

GURPS (Generic Universal Roleplaying System)

If you don’t like..

If you wish Dungeons and Dragons fantasy had a bit more realism in it, GURPS is undoubtedly the master of bringing the simulation of reality to life in a fantasy RPG and has been for decades.

I know that for many D&D players and DM’s the draw to D&D is the abstraction, the cinematic world in which fantasy exists quite a ways outside of the premise of realistic world and functions more like a cinematic movie with CGI-infused action… but… For some players, they want to create some gritty reality and though I would still recommend Hyperborea for most, for those that really want to get into the nuts and bolts of reality to a point of simulation, for that GURPS is one of the most robust, most flexible and without question one of the most expansive systems in existence.

Not only does GURPS have every conceivable element of fantasy covered, in truth, GURPS really lives up to the name universal because you can effectively run pretty much anything you can think of using this system.

This is a skill and skill point buy system, so character creation here redefines the word expansive. You could take a million players and ask them all to make a Fighter and you are going to have a million unique Fighters. This is a game that does not repeat and two characters are never going to be alike.

The simulation element here is very detailed and as such, execution of most mechanics like combat is going to be slow. This is a game that zooms in on every slash and parry, you track things like location of your hits, damage to your armor, cuts and bruises and everything in-between.

It’s extremely visceral and definitely a big departure from the abstraction of Dungeons and Dragons, but I would be remiss not to include it in this list as GURPS ability to create a truly unique gaming experience is unmatched. I can’t think of any game systems on the market, past or present that produces the sort of focused gaming experience that GURPS is capable of.

For me, GURPS is often my game of choice when I want to do something extremely specific when it comes to a campaign using elements of play normally not covered by other systems. For example, a few years back I wanted to run a western and I wanted to have a really great, very detailed mechanic for gun fights that was realistic to the real west, not the one you see in movies. GURPS performed wonderfully bringing that surprising reality of gunfights of the old west to the table.

When it comes to fantasy, the nice thing about GURPS is that the level of detail you want to include in your campaign is up to you. This is because everything in GURPS is very modular and almost all the rules are optional. At the core of GURPS is an extremely simple system and you simply add layers of rules like legos to get that perfect amount of detail you’re looking for.

If nothing else, for DM’s it’s a great read as simply exposing yourself to this system, will plant ideas into your head you probably would never have considered before. It’s a gold mine of inspiration, both mechanical and narrative which, even if you never play the system is worth reading.

Great system, and definitely a worthy addition to this list.

Old School Essentials

If you don’t like..

If you wonder what D&D was like back in the 80’s and what to try something super classic, Old School Essentials has you covered.

Ok so I know I plug Old School Essentials quite a bit and so do a lot of nostalgic D&D fans who love the old days, but I’m also painfully aware how difficult reading and coming to grips with the old D&D books can be. Basic/Expert D&D and Advanced D&D 1st edition are not the most approachable games, in particular, if you are a 5th edition player and accustomed to a certain level of organization.

I think this is what makes Old School Essentials and it’s expanded book, Advanced Genre Fantasy Rules such a great core system. It gives you the old-school game, but with a measure of modernization that 5e players will understand and expect.

This is an amazing re-edit of the classic 1st edition D&D game (both basic and advanced) and delivers that old-school gaming experience minus a few of unwanted warts like THAC0!

I have been running Old School Essentials for nearly two years now with a gaming crew and we have had an absolute blast with this one. It’s simple and straight to the point and while very structured, delivers a great space for some amazing storytelling.

This game is, in a nutshell, everything that old-school gaming is about so if you’re looking to give that classic D&D experience a try, this is the game you want to do it with.

What makes old-school D&D so much fun. Watch stranger things.. its that.

Alien RPG

If you don’t like..

If you are unsure what to do about the whole Wizards of the Coast-D&D fiasco and you just need a break but don’t want to commit to anything long-term but still want to run something fun for your gaming group while you decide, Alien RPG is the KING of One-Shots.

Ok so it’s science-fiction and not fantasy and I get maybe this is a bit of a stretch for this list, but Alien RPG, voted #4 of Best RPGS in 2023 by GamersRadar to the surprise of no one, is without question in my mind, one of the most fun one shots I have ever run.

With Alien RPG there are two modes of play. Campaign mode, which is your standard way of running RPG’s where you run an episodic… campaign as the name suggests and Cinematic mode which is a mode designed to give you that Alien movie feel, perfect for one-shots or short mini-series campaigns.

What you get with Alien RPG is a gritty, yet easy-to-run system similar to the one used in Forbidden Lands (already mentioned) but you get to horse around in the Alien universe.

Horror, suspense and action wrapped up in what I believe to be one of the best franchises in existence.

Now I will admit, being a super fan, I’m a bit biased here, but the popularity of this game is not a fad, there is real substance here as the writing and design for this game is absolutely top-notch. You have never seen a gaming book this gorgeous in your life if all you know is D&D. They spared no expense anywhere, it’s so well supported, so beautifully designed and illustrated, the writing just melts off the page.

I love this game, it’s without question the game I grab if someone comes to me and says “let’s run a one-shot”. This game delivers on all pistons, it is pitch-perfect in bringing an exciting one-shot experience.

Best of List, Gaming Articles

4x Science-Fiction Civilization Building Games: Part I

At the start of this summer, I wanted to have a writing project for the blog, something unique to work on when those rainy days come or when I’m up late with a cold beer after the family has gone to bed.  It’s something of a tradition for me and has produced articles such as my Battletech Guide series (Part I, Part II & Part III) and my Star Wars: X-Wing guide (Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV & Part V) for example.  

This year’s summer project is to evaluate and write a comparison article on Science-Fiction 4x civilization-building games, a topic that is something of a passion of mine.  I have always been a big fan of monster games in general as far back as I can remember, getting my start with classics like Advanced Civilization, Axis & Allies and Shogun back in the 80’s.  My love for SF 4x games however comes from the world of PC games with classics like Master of Orion and Galactic Civilization series of games.  

For years Twilight Imperium has been the ruling king of the hill of this genre in board game form, it has floated around in my top 10 best games of all time since I started it nearly 10 years ago and remains the mecca of this genre in my opinion.  Equally, for the same amount of years I have searched for alternatives for Twilight Imperium if for no other reason than the simple fact that Twilight Imperium is a real pain to get to the table despite its many positive elements.  Simply put, it’s a very long, very heavy and conceptually complex game to get into.  It demands a bit more than most gamers are willing to give and so I have searched for alternatives that might bring the 4x experience to the table more often with a wider range of players.

My hope was that if I explored this genre in detail, I might find some 4x games that might be a bit more approachable.  Going into this project I have no expectations that any of the games I will try will replace Twilight Imperium for me as my ruling favorite, but I am hoping to find some new 4x games to explore.

My research has shown that there are quite a few potentially great SF 4x games in the board game world and it’s my intention to go deep with this article series and do some detailed assessment of what I believe are the most popular of these games that will hopefully act as both a buying guide for those looking to get into the games and a sort of review for each individual game.

The List & Why

There are quite a few games that could go on this list, in fact, arguably to be a proper assessment of the whole genre I think a list of 10-15 would be needed but I wanted to narrow it down to the most widely popular games and I wanted to have some games that hardened veterans of the genre would also approve of which is to say, games that might be more obscure to general mass markets but the experts within consider staples of the genre.  This I felt was important because the goal here is to expose you, the reader to something new and interesting and battle-tested, not necessarily a comparison of the most known games.  

Twilight Imperium 4th Edition

The ultimate 4x science-fiction epic, it is considered by many to be the king of the 4x genre.

Twilight Imperium was a very obvious choice, it is considered a hallmark of the genre, ask any fan of SF 4x civilization building to make a list for you, and this one will always be on it.   It is widely accepted as one of the best in the genre, arguably the one by which all other games will be judged so it had to be on this list.

Eclipse:  Second Dawn For The Galaxy

Many argue that Eclipse is the Twilight Imperium killer, a more refined, faster playing 4x game.

Eclipse is perhaps the second most widely known and accepted game in the genre and actually has even broader mass market appeal.  More importantly, it’s considered the most natural competitor to Twilight Imperium by the gaming community even if the publisher makes no such claims.  It is also highly disputed by Twilight Imperium fans as a contender, some argue for it’s shorter play time while others insist it comes up short.  I love a good controversy, so it had to go on the list as well.

Star Trek: Ascendancy

A relative newcomer by 4x standards, but this 2016 release has made a splash with 4x and Star Trek fans alike often compared to Eclipse.

A very popular franchise but a less commonly listed game, Star Trek: Ascendancy is a full-fledged 4x game that has had quite a bit of buzz among 4x fans and has seen a number of reprints since its 2016 release which means people are still playing & buying it. One really interesting element of Ascendancy is that many argue its a better, albeit less refined Eclipse and there is a lot of debate about its quality that seems to have created a sort of Ascendancy vs. Eclipse grudge match.  From that, it was an easy decision to include it.

Exodus: Proxima Centauri

While my first experience with this one was less then stellar, it’s a community favorite and many argue that it is a far more competitive and varied game in direct competition with Twilight Imperium and Eclipse.

I was very hesitant to add this one to my list mainly because I own it, I have played it once and neither my gaming crew or I thought much of it.  Despite this among 4x circles, it’s considered a staple and standard for the genre and it’s been compared to Eclipse and Twilight Imperium in countless reviews, many feeling this is the superior game.  While I have my doubts, the evidence is in its success.   It has also not only remained in print but has received a 2nd edition and been nominated for some prestigious awards including the 2013 UK Games expo for Best Boardgame of the year.  It’s clearly a competitor, it had to go on the list.

Stellaris Infinite Legacy

Based on one of the most popular 4x games in modern times, this new kid on the block is making a lot of bold claims about being an evolution in the genre and we are going to give it, its shot to prove it in this competition.

The final game on the list comes from Academy Games which attempts to create a board game version of one of the most popular modern 4x PC game franchises in existence, the fan favorite and beloved Stellaris.  I know very little about this one but I felt strongly that if someone is going to try to re-create a board game version of one of the best 4x PC games on the market today, it needed to be on the list.  

That’s your list, 5 games.  I’m committed to play each game a minimum of one time, though it’s likely I will have a couple of plays of each game before this article is complete and I have the advantage of having played some of these games already before I even start.  I have no idea how long it will actually take me to complete this article series, but I’m hopeful that it will make for some fun gaming and writing.

How they will be judged

I think it’s important to establish some method or standard for how all the games will be judged to ensure not only that the competition is fair, but that there is at least a general understanding of what the expectations for a 4x game are.  Each game will be rated from 1 to 5 on each of the following categories.

Is it a true 4x game

The first category simply ensures that the game meets its advertised goal which is to be a 4x game.  4x is a reference to the four key elements of a science-fiction civilization-building game.  

Exploration

Does the game have a fun/interesting exploration mechanic, after all this is a game about building a civilization in space and exploration has to be a part of that.

Expand

This is a bit of a tricky one as the word is intended to have multiple meanings.  It’s a reference to the civilization-building component of the game and covers anything that helps to build your civilization from a fledging single planet to a mass empire.  Science research, fleet and base building, economic engine growth and really anything else to do with the construction and forward progress of your civilization.

Exploit

Similar to expanding in a way, exploiting is about making sure that the galaxy itself is the source of the struggle in the game and that it breeds player competition for resources to ensure players are forced out of their comfort zone of their homeworld.  Exploitation is about the economics of the game and the road to confrontation and the final and arguably most exciting element of the 4x genre, war (Exterminate).

Exterminate

In the end, the exploration, expansion and exploitation of the galaxy should put the players into conflict with each other and lead to the expected eventual outcome which is war.  All good 4x games are in the end in some shape or form war games.

The Extras

While the 4x civilization-building genre is very specific, many of these games include concepts like politics, diplomacy, trade, espionage and other elements often associated, but not directly mentioned as part of the 4x mantra.  These extras should count and hence they get their own category in the evaluation.

Competitive & Fun

This second category is a bit more opinion driven, it’s about a general judgment and comparison of how competitive and fun the game is.  Does it hit those joy centers with its mechanics, do players walk away satisfied, is the game balanced and fair and of course naturally how does it fair in general as a gaming experience.

The Event Status & Presentation

Civilization-building games should be an event, a robust, full-fledged game that everyone is excited about and builds a foundation for a great gaming event.  This combines its visual appeal and presentation, its replayability and its status as a game around which an event can be played.  4x games shouldn’t just be board games, they need to generate a much higher level of excitement beyond just a simple game night, they should feel epic in size and scope.  This category is a measurement and discussion of its status as an event game and includes its presentation.

Deliver On The Promise

This one is important mainly because I don’t think a game should be judged solely on the expectations and desires of players, but on what the game actually promises.  Whether it’s by advertisement on the box or website, we use that information to determine how well it delivers what it promised.  Does the game do what it said it would?  That is the question we are answering and rating here.

Strengths vs. Weakness

This is the only category that will not be scored so much as listed.  I will attempt to outline each game’s strengths and weaknesses and help guide players to the game that is right for their group.  

Comparison Ranking

Finally is the comparison ranking.  This category will not be included with each game, but rather be an article in its own right where I compare and contrast all of the games and come to a conclusion about where they ultimately rank in this competition.  It will be a definitive, top 5 of the best from this list of SF 4x civilization-building games.

Conclusion

Ok so that is the setup for this article series, we have our game list and we have our established method of judgment.  I’m uncertain exactly what order these articles will appear or even what approach I will take beyond these simple goals but the plan is first to play all of the games so that I have a strong basis for assessment.  I expect this series will go well beyond the summer to complete, but keep an eye out for it in the near future.

Best of List, Board Game Reviews

On The Table Extra: Vacation Gaming

Every year in early March my extended family and I take a trip up to the Swedish ski slopes for a week of fun in the snow. Naturally, there’s a lot of downtime in the evenings so we play a lot of board games, in fact, I pack up as much as I can carry and despite bringing a considerable selection we manage to play through everything every year, this year was no different.

Texas Hold’em

Texas Hold’Em is the modern and most popular poker variant in the world, yet it is generally not considered part of the board gaming sphere which I find rather odd as it’s an awesome card game.

Some might not count Texas Hold’em as a game belonging to the world of board gaming but I beg to differ. If Texas Hold’em didn’t exist as a game for gamblers today and was packaged up as a family card game I predict it would be a smash hit.

It certainly is with my family, playing poker is a long-standing tradition and while we never play for money, the games are no less competitive and intense.

For those that have never played, Texas Hold’em is a unique member of the poker family mainly because the game is as much about the cards as it is about the betting and psychology of the game. Most hands of Hold’em are won and lost without cards ever shown. We have 4 kids between the ages of 10 to 17 in the family and they take their poker pretty seriously creating what is without a doubt the most competitive game of the week. This year the kids really showed us some serious skill taking the old dogs down with ease, clearly, we need to step up our game.

Hero Realms

Hero Realms takes the very basic premise of dynamic deck building and turns it into a dueling game with a fantasy twist, in my eyes a perfect combination.

Hero Realms is typically played two-player and it’s a fine game for that purpose but in our family, a free for all 4-6 player mega game is the way we do it and while it can go a bit long and there’s player elimination, this cut-throat competition brings with it various negotiations, alliances and betrayal which the kids love!

Hero Realms is a deck-building card game based loosely on the Dominion concept. The twist here is that each player gets a fantasy character (Thief, Wizard, Fighter etc..) represented by cards in a 10 card deck. In the center of the table are an additional 5 cards always available for purchase into your deck. As players take their turn they play cards from their hand, which include gold cards allowing them to purchase more cards for their deck. As play goes on players build up their decks with bigger and bigger plays possible. Anyone can attack anyone on their turn and so the game is as much about surviving as it is about looking threatening and negotiating to keep people from attacking you.

In the end it’s complete chaos, eventually, someone makes a big attack, that triggers rivalries and the game devolves into an all-out war until there is one hero left standing to proclaim victory.

This is a really fun game, it’s actually a variant on a science-fiction version of the game called Star Realms. It’s easy to teach and learn, while there is some reading required, there is really good iconography for the game that the younger kids pick up on really quickly so no major trouble getting the younger crowd into this one. I would not call it a deeply strategic game, but there is a lot to the deck-building concept, so which card you buy is a key decision point and how you build your deck will ultimately determine how well you combo when it’s your turn to play cards. Like Dominion, it’s all about keeping your deck lean and effective.

Twilight Struggle

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Twilight Struggle is THE finest representative in board gaming that creates a bridge between historical wargaming and the rest of the board gaming market. It’s a bonafide cross-over hit.

This classic cold war card game was for a time a major obsession for me, but it’s really difficult for experienced players like me to bring a new player up to speed to a point where they can be a challenging opponent because of how card knowledge in the game is such a huge advantage.

Thankfully over the last couple of years, I have been slowly but surely training my brother in law and whenever we do family trips like this, TS comes with us and we play a few rounds. He is not quite far along enough yet to beat me, but I offer him a fairly sizable handicap, and it’s starting to click for him. I think a few more games and he is going to be ready to play without the training wheels. My hope is that this will be one of those games the two of us can play together into our retirement years.

Unless you have been living under a board gaming rock, you know what Twilight Struggle is at least by name, but what I think most boardgames miss is that while this game is a historical board game, some might even call it a war game, it does not really fall into the standard historical war game formula. It really is just a great two-player strategy game and I would definitely recommend it for people who are not into historical wars. TS definitely transcends beyond its roots as the designers intended and while I will still argue that Imperial Struggle, the designers follow up to Twilight Struggle is a much better game, it does not cross over as easily as TS does.

One of the best games ever made in my opinion, an unquestionable classic and a fantastic gateway game into the larger world of historical card-driven games from which there are many fantastic titles to choose from.

Endeavor: Age of Sail

The more I play it the more I like it. This game is quickly becoming one of my favorite Euro-style games thanks in big part to its big board game feel in a very reasonable time frame.

This game comes in a big box and has a lot of pieces so I was quite hesitant to bring it with me, but my daughter insisted as she loves this game so I hauled this beast with me despite protests from the wife.

In the end, it turned out to be well worth it. The thing about Endeavor is that it has this great “big board game” feel and table presence but is actually a relatively short and simple game. It looks kind of intimidating and complex but once you understand the basic flow of a turn, it’s very easy to connect the rules to the strategy and players are typically off and running after a round or two. We had an age range between 12-50 and everyone picked it up very easily.

There are many deep and meaningful choices in the game, it’s a bit of a race to victory points, with resource management and much of the strategy is about well-timed execution of the five different actions you can take in a turn. What I find really interesting about this game is that it plays really well at all player counts including 2 player games, but the strategies that work in the game change wildly depending on how many players you have at the table. It’s a very dynamic setup for the game as well so you end up having to “re-think” your approach each time you play.

The version of the game I have is the new deluxe version which comes with a bunch of expansions we are yet to try, so far the base game has been more than enough for us.

This is a great family game having as many if not fewer rules than RISK or Monopoly, but a far more robust and interesting execution. I think my favorite aspect of Endeavor is how it works with a wide range of gaming groups, casual to veterans, it always finds its audience.

King of Tokyo

This silly dice chucker never stops impressing me with its uncanny ability to turn anyone into a fan.

Between the cartoon art style, the giant monster theme and the Yahtzee style gameplay, to me this is the perfect family game. The rules fit on a napkin and while there is some strategy this is a game of pushing your luck with dice which works really well with the casual crowd, yet makes for a great filler for more seasoned gamers.

It’s a pretty simple concept, you select one classic Japanese-themed monster like King Kong or Godzilla for example and you try to proclaim control over Tokyo in what is essentially a king of the hill game, as you fight all of the other big monsters in the game. You roll dice to do damage, build up energy to purchase special ability cards and simply try to last on the hill as long as you can to score points.

I always say that for every classic old-school game there is a modern replacement that is much better. In the case of King of Tokyo, it totally replaces Yahtzee for that light-hearted simple dice chucker.

A really fun game that produces a lot of big moments that had everyone cheering.

Sheriff of Nottingham

A party game for gamers that will have you in stitches, it has never let me down.

We played this one multiple times during our vacation, it was without question the big hit of the week.

Sheriff of Nottingham is closer to an “activity” than a game as the premise is quite simple. Each player draws six commodity cards (Chickens, Cheese, Bread etc..) at the start of each round and slips any amount of cards into a hidden baggy. One player is the Sherrif each round and that player must decide to either open (inspect) the baggy or allow it to pass through. The trick is that players can lie about what they are trying to get past the Sherrif and there are various “illegal” goods that are worth more than the legal ones. Things like Crossbows and Alchemic potions.

Players can bribe, make promises and deals, pretty much anything goes, but if the Sherrif catches you on a lie and inspects the bag, you have to pay a penalty. If the Sherrif opens the bag and you were telling the truth, the Sherrif must pay you a fee in addition to you getting to pass through with your goods for additional scoring at the end of the game.

Each player gets a turn at being Sherrif and whoever manages to get the most goods through (legal and illegal) wins the game. Typically games are won by the player that manages to get the most illegal goods past the Sherrif so there is a lot of motivation to lie, but if you get caught too often you aren’t likely to win, nor will you win if you inspect too many legal commodities.

The entire premise of the game is about social interaction and while there might be some strategy here, the game is rarely played with that approach. Most players naturally take to the psychology of the game and try to trick each other into opening or not opening the baggies as the case may be.

This game produces a lot of silly moments and when we play it, most of the game is spent hysterically laughing the entire time. It’s an absolute blast and works really well with pretty much any group, cocktails are recommended while playing this one!

We play this one at our summer gaming weekend retreat as well which is made up of many serious veteran gamers and this is usually a major hit there as well so this is one of those games that just always hits well with any sort of group which is why it comes so highly recommended by me.

Seven Wonders

I actually think it’s a great game and tend to agree with the general consensus about that, but personally, every table I introduce this to seems to shrug its soldiers with an audible “meh”.

Seven Wonders is a game about card selection and has been a highly rated game for years. This one didn’t hit that well with our little family gaming group and I have had trouble with it in the past as well with other groups.

I think it’s a great game and highly rated for good reason but it’s one of those games that doesn’t make a great first impression for some reason. You have to play it a few times before things click and that can be a hard sell if after a first try if you are unimpressed.

Seven Wonders is a bit like a professional golfer playing golf left-handed for the first time. Everything is familiar and logical, but there is just something off about it and some might see that as a challenge worth pursuing, others just feel like it should work differently than it does.

I have personally always really liked it, but to quote my daughter “It’s like a crappy Seven Wonders Duel”, which I think is a fair assessment. Seven Wonders Duel is a kind of two-player version of Seven Wonders that came a few years after the release of this one and I agree with her of the two games Duel is a much more interesting and less “odd” version of the game. It’s for two players only, so there is that drawback and unlike Seven Wonders there are no expansions for Seven Wonders Duel which notably are rumored to improve Seven Wonders a great deal (I have never tried them). For me personally, I have never had much luck getting anyone excited, it has always landed a bit flat, but I actually do think it’s a pretty fun game.

There were a few other microgames we played including Albion: The Resistance, Coupe, For Rent and The Hand of the King, all great games in their own right but I have talked so many times about these staple games in my collection I will just leave it here as a list.

It was a great week for gaming and skiing, now I need a nap!

Best of List

My Top 20 Best Games of All Time 2021 Edition

That’s right, what once was a top 10 list now becomes a top 20 list! It is time once again to update the favorites list, its been about a year since I did my last Top 10 Best Games back in January last year and I followed up that list with the Back 20 best games of all time list in March.

I never thought I would get to a point where I have played so many games that it would be difficult for me to trim down my list to a top 20 but here we are and I can say it was not easy. I had to cut pretty deep, it hurt, a lot of really great games did not make this list that I consider great games!

This year one change I made is how I temper the list. Namely, I have made it a point to affect the scores of games that I have not played in a long time. The way I see it, if you’re going to be on my top 20 favorite games of all time list, you need to be something that I push to get to the table.

Alright, enough setup, here we go!

20. Shogun (Dirk Henn version)

The contrast between the quiet, contemplative planning phase and the outrageously chaotic execution phase make this one of the most memorable quasi Euro historical war games in my collection.

Shogun is one of those games where a lot of people will argue is not a war game, while others may adamantly insist that it is. All I will say is that it’s an area control game, there are battles and winning is all about managing chaos, if that isn’t war then I don’t know what is.

Based very abstractly on the civil war conflict of medieval Japan, this is a pre-programming game where you define your actions with limited knowledge about which order actions will be executed in. During the execution phase, this very chaotic game uses a cube tower to resolve conflicts by taking armies represented by different colored cubes, tossing them into the tower and the winner is whoever has the most cubes that come out. This tower traps a lot of these cubes and if you know anything about statistics and the laws of chaos, you know that this is probably the closes thing you will ever come to true randomness in a game. You can have fights where 10 blue cubes go up against 2 red cubes and the battle results are 2 blue cubes and 7 red cubes. Its chaos personified.

I know it’s not everyone’s bag but I have always said that this game wins on-table atmosphere. It’s really the craps of war games, you gamble but the cube tower is just one of those game elements that gets everyone out of their chair. I love this game, always have and while it’s at the tail end of the list it beats out quite a few worthy contenders for the spot.

19. B-17 Flying Fortress Leader

This game is a guilty pleasure for me, I have my reservations about some of its mechanics and execution, but it wins on the theme in a big way and for a solo game that is critical to its success.

Given that the game is set up on my table several times a year like clockwork, I knew this one was going to appear on this list somewhere. B-17 Flying Fortress Leader by Dean Brown of DVG games to me is a very biased favorite, a game about creating a narrative in my head on a topic I’m very fond of. I don’t actually know if it’s a “good game” in the practical sense though I gave this one a very generous 4 out of 5-star review mostly driven by the success of the theme. This solo game is certainly not without its blemishes and I would not proclaim it to be perfect by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, I have quite a few house rules and corrections I have created and use when playing this game which shouldn’t be necessary for a game I rate so highly. The nice thing about running a blog without a comment section is that I don’t have to listen to people telling me how wrong I am! Though I’m not sure I would vigorously disagree with such statements.

Warts and all I love this game, with a bit of house rule love I find it has a deep meaningful core with intriguing gameplay, challenging scenarios and an uncanny ability to create vivid stories. This is a slightly complex game so I always recommend that if you are completely new to historical war games and solo gaming that maybe you start with something a bit lighter, but it’s a great graduation gift for yourself when you reach that point that you feel ready for something with some meat on its bones. In particular, if you’re like me and find World War II aviation engrossing.

18. War Of The Ring

There is nothing like the feeling of an epic scale game that captures a story, War of the Ring is the best of its kind.

War of the Ring plunges to number 18 after enjoying years in the top 10 of my lists. It takes a dive because honestly, it has been on my top 10 list for more years than I care to admit and I can count on one hand the number of times I have played it in recent years. It’s just hard to justify a game on this list that collects dust on my shelf most of the time.

That said I still think it’s an amazing game, both from a thematic standpoint and a mechanical standpoint, this is a highly engaging and very traumatic 2 player game tailor-made for Lord of the Rings fans of which I count myself among. The challenge is getting it to the table and there is a lot standing in its way.

It’s a fairly complex game, it’s for 2 players only, it’s quite long, has a very extensive setup (It takes a good 30-45 minutes to setup) and none of the rules are natural or intuitive so pretty much every time I have wanted to play this game I found I had to learn it from scratch. It’s just a real pain to get to the table and while I do think the payoff is so worth it, because it really is amazing, I find these days there are lots of amazing 2 player games on my shelf that are just much easier to get going.

I love it and I keep it on this list because I hope that someday some Lord of the Rings fan will come to me and pull it off my shelf and say “let’s play”. I will do so gladly and without reservation. The War of the Ring wants to be played, it needs to be played, it’s my precious!

17. Field Commander Napoleon

Solo games often boil down to solving puzzles and Field Commander Napoleon certainly falls into that camp, but there is enough to solve here that it will keep you busy for a long time.

When I discovered DVG with B-17 Flying Fortress, I simultaneously discovered the wonderful world of solo and historical war games and given how much I liked B-17, I googled “best solo historical war games” and Field Commander Napoleon popped up on a number of top 10 lists. I had just come off a stint with Napoleon Imperium which introduced me to Napoleonic era history and I was ready for more so I took the plunge.

I’m so glad I did because all of the accolades and fandom this game has produced is justified, it really is a fascinating and sometimes very challenging solo game. It not only confirmed that DVG games which focuses primarily on historical solo games knows what they are doing but it permanently swung the door open for me on solo games in general which I have been exploring ever since.

This is simultaneously a tactical and strategic game that really places you in a position to solve puzzles across several scenarios that make up the whole of Napoleon’s career. It does a great job of conveying the unique problems in the different types of campaigns Napoleon embarked on while also ensuring the mechanics remain fun and approachable as it maintains its link to history. The only drawback of this game is that once you solve these puzzles the game loses some of its steam and unlike B-17 I haven’t come up with any interesting house rules to revive the game. The good thing is that I have a really poor memory so I expect given enough time I will come back around to this one and re-experience it again. Great game, well worth the investment as these scenarios are going to take some serious hours of playtime before you discover all the nuances that will lead you to easy victories. Pro-tip, the strategy is probably not what you think it is and it’s why you are losing!

16. Star Trek Fleet Captains

I have introduced this game to people who went from “I hate everything Star Trek” to “but this game is awesome”. For a game to be so good that despite its overwhelming focus on theme it can turn your head even if you hate the theme is amazing, never seen that happen in any other game in my 30+ years playing board games.

I would say that this game much like War of the Ring is a bit of a dust collector in my collection, but unlike War of the Ring it actually is quite intuitive and easy to get to the table in theory, but what it requires is that you know some Star Trek fans. My friends, god love them are not such people and while they tolerate my Star Trek fandom and occasionally humor me and play Fleet Captains with me, they do not get the same enjoyment out of this game as a fan like me does.

This game is Star Trek in the box, it is hands down one of the most thematic and narrative board games I have ever played. It captures the feeling of the Star Trek TV shows perfectly, there is no doubt in my mind that only a true Trekie could have made such a game with so much attention to detail and love for the genre infused within it.

I adore this game, I play it every chance I get which is to say, not very often but it never lets me down when I do and it’s actually so good that even my friends who proclaim loudly “Star Trek sucks” admit that the game is actually pretty fun and that to me is evidence of just how well put together this Fleet Captain is.

If you and your friends are Star Trek fans, this is a no-brainer, it is THE best Star Trek game ever made but no I have not played

15. Washingtons War

Washington’s War is a really great entry-level historical war game, not only because it’s easy to teach and learn, but because it retains a depth of gameplay that keeps it interesting even for serious war gamers.

One of three of a growing list of Mark Herman games breaking into my favorite games of all time list, Washingtons War appears to be a kind of bastard child of a light historical war game and a distant cousin to Twilight Struggle but what it really is, is a successor to Mark Hermans long time classic We The People. I’ve never met anyone or heard anyone suggest We The People needs a re-print, so this successor really is a replacement for the game and though I have never played We The People it must be doing it justice.

For me personally, the game’s history or lineage really doesn’t matter, for me Washingtons War is my go-to game for introducing casual board gamers into the wonderful world of historical war games. The rules are simple, the strategy exciting but not overwhelming, the subject matter is a piece of history most people are already somewhat familiar with and the game is really pretty usually surprising non-historical war gamers who often think all historical war games are hex and counter ugly ducklings. This one helps me get them to convert to the dark side from which there is no return.

This is not the only reason however Washington’s War finds its way to my list, its true genius and secret is that it’s actually a deep and meaningful strategy game that you can explore repeatedly and it always finds a way to surprise you. Actually, my favorite thing about this game which I believe I have gotten quite good at is that new players pick up on it really quickly and can present a very good challenge, often beating me on their first playthrough despite my experience with the game. It’s a thing of beauty that a game like this is so approachable, easy to pick up yet represents the historical war game genre so well.

14. Twilight Struggle

I have never had a game on my best of list that dropped in its ranking because I played it too much until now.

I think most would argue that this stone-cold classic belongs much higher on everyone’s list, especially mine and to be honest with you a few hundred plays of this ago I would agree with you. There comes a time when you have played a game so many bloody times that you are just sick of it and I do not fault Twilight Struggle as a game for that. For nearly a year I was playing this game 2-3 times a week, plus an additional 2-3 games a night using the iPad app. Playing TS was a daily routine and passion.

Suffices to say for me it is played out for now and drops on my list out of sheer exhaustion. Like a retired boxing champ, it has nothing to be ashamed of, I played this game more times in a year than the rest of my collection combined times five! It’s an awesome game that gets shelved for all the right reasons!

13. Tide of Iron

It looks and feels like a heavy world war II tactical game, without that uncomfortable eliteness required from most games in the genre. This is an approachable game anyone can learn to play, but it is a historical war game, no doubt about it.

Tide of Iron has a bit of a strange history with me. When I first got it, I had only a mild affection for it, but it was long before historical war games really found their way into my collection in a big way. I got it because it was a Fantasy Flight Games release and I was something of a Christian T. Peterson fanboy for a while. Twilight Imperium and Game of Thrones (both the board game and card game) were among my favorite games of all time for a very long time. Tide of Iron however never really achieved particularly great heights for me and sort of fell off my radar becoming a coffin box dust collector on my shelf.

Then one day, after I got into historical war games I decided I was going to shop around for a really good squad-level world war II tactical game. I searched and searched and ran across Tide of Irons and realized, shit I already have that game. Pulled it out with a buddy of mine and realized that not only is this a great game, but it’s actually a really great game. Played it twice, three times.. got really into it and it sort of became “the” tactical world war II game for me and I never actually bought anything to replace it to this day.

I still love this game because it’s both a challenging and visual treat, it’s fairly easy to teach and learn, plays relatively quickly and has a crap ton of fan-made content thanks to an awesome community that latched on to this game for a time. For that reason, Tide of Iron comes out of retirement and finds its way back to my best of all-time list. I won’t dirty the waters here and say it’s the best squad-level tactical world war II game out there since I have played a total of ZERO others, but I do think it’s a fantastic game in general.

12. Peloponnesian War

My latest love affair, I can’t get enough of this one, another Mark Herman design for me to obsess over.

Every year when I make this list, there is some game that appears on the list that I recently played or I’m currently playing and its position on the list becomes inflated due to my current infatuation with the game. Sometimes these games stick and stay on the list becoming permanent residents, often they drop down or even drop off the list with the same ferocity as their arrival. I’m not going to apologize for that, but I will warn you that Peloponnesian War is definitely my current love affair.

I absolutely adore this solo game, it services all of my personal G spots as far as games go from really unique design, clever mechanics and deeply rich narrative. It’s my current obsession and while such infatuation often comes and goes, it’s worth pointing out that it’s simultaneously the 3rd Mark Herman game I have tried and the 3rd Mark Herman game to make my all-time favorite list. The guy never lets me down. I did a review of this one recently if you want some more detail.

11. 1830: Railways and Robber Barons

This is a deeply flawed game that requires quite a bit of intervention but when you play with the right variants it’s pure gold.

This classic Francis Tresham has been around since the mid 80’s and it has been fueling my passion for board games for years. I guess I’m saying that I loved this one before it was cool even though I’ve only just recently introduced it to my gaming crew here in Sweden. It was in semi-retirement before that for about a decade.

I love train games, but I would be lying if I said I love train board games. My love for train games largely comes from PC game examples, most notably the Railroad Tycoon series by Sid Meier. This game scratches that itch and though I always warn people that the hype about this game’s legendary status is a bit overcooked, it is a really awesome, very cut-throat and often mean-spirited board game that most people have a love it or hate it response to.

When I introduced it to my crew here in Sweden, it was immediatetly proclaimed a must play in Hassela game which might not mean much to my readers, but our yearly Hassela weekend retreat is a very serious, arguably almost religious matter in our group, so 1830 should be honored!

It’s a long game and there are many variants for this game both official and unofficial. I consider its status on this list assuming a very strict adherence to certain variance I believe elevate this game from a “meh” to an “aha”! One of these days I’m going to have to write an article on the proper way to play this game if you want to get the most out of it, but suffices to say its status on this list comes with that caveat.

10. Ikusa (Shogun)

While many gamers consider dice chuckers like RISK to be beneath them, to me Ikusa is KING of such games and I always say, if you don’t like chucking dice, you are in the wrong hobby.

While I won’t claim Ikusa (Originally Shogun) by Milton Bradly was the first board game I ever played, it is the first board game I played from which I emerged a fully Knighted board gamer. It is my grail game, my birthing chamber.

Now I have played all of the Milton Bradly game masters series classics extensively including Axis and Allies, Fortress America, Conquest of the Empire and Broadsides & Boarding Parties, I loved them all but only Shogun (aka Ikusa) makes the list because to me its the only one that still holds up by today’s standards. I could make an argument for Axis and Allies, but for me that game has been completetly replaced by Larry Harris’s latest brain child War Room (more on that later).

Suffices to say my absolute favorite historical period is medieval Japan, I love a good dice chucker and I love a game with hidden actions, so Shogun fits into that wheelhouse-like glove. This one still sees play today and I almost always bring it out when someone comes up with the crazy idea to play RISK… my answer is… ok you want to play RISK, let’s play RISK but let’s do it proper like.

9. Dune Imperium

I have played this one so much I had to sleeve the cards because I was wearing it out. This is a tight package that never disappoints and you don’t need to be a Dune fan to love this game, but if you are, it’s just a cherry on top of the experience.

Dune Imperium was definitely a contender for the best game I played in 2021, though it was released in 2020. While I still argue that Empires: Age of Discovery is the single best worker placement game in existence, Dune Imperium takes the worker placement genre in a whole new direction with added card play and direct confrontation mechanics that elevate it far beyond your standard Euro games.

It just gets so many things just right. The really tight worker placement mechanic forces painful decisions. The execution of the card building mechanic is perfect, making it just important enough, but not so important it overshadows the rest of the game. The tension-building battle mechanic between players at the end of each round really brings contentious gameplay to this Euro. Finally, the fact that the Dune franchise was used as the theme here just fits perfectly contrary to most Euros that feel like the theme is an afterthought.

Brilliant design, worthy of any game table whether you are a Euro fan or not, this game breaks out of the rut the Euro design space has been in for the last couple of years rehashing the same boring mechanics over and over.

8. Twilight Imperium

I easily have over 100 games under my belt with the 3rd edition of this 4x classic, I have been playing for over a decade. It always has and likely always will be the ultimate 4x sci-fi game, I have never seen any other come even close to matching it.

Twilight Imperium 3rd edition was my number one pick for many years back to back. This was a game I played extensively with a regular six-man group meeting as often as once per week over the course of several years to play the game. I don’t want to toot my own horn too much, but we were basically masters of this game. We played so often that we knew this game intimately and to such a degree that a typical game for us would only take 2-4 hours, which is saying a lot as the average playtime for most groups exceeded 6 hours.

Twilight Imperium 4th edition came out but by then my group had played this game so much it just didn’t have the same impact on us as many fans of the TI series. That is not to say that we didn’t like the game, we did and we do, in fact, I would argue that 4e is a big improvement and is overall a much better game. We never however got into this new version of the game nearly as much and now only play it once or twice a year for old times sake.

Still, TI ranks pretty high on my personal list, it is the unquestionable king of 4x grand strategy board games and knocks all other contenders out of the ring with minimal effort (I’m looking at you Eclipse!). It is the definitive experience in this genre with levels of depth that exceed expectation by any measure. This is not just an event game but it’s a lifestyle game, the sort of thing that you can build an entire gaming group around. Love it, always have, always will.

7. Empires: Age of Discovery

Bright, big and elaborate, Empires: Age of Discovery is a deluxe visual treat, but that is just a bonus here, this is easily one of the best worker placement games you will ever play.

Age of Discovery has been on my shelf since the gorgeous deluxe reprint was released and though I don’t play it often because I find its best at maximum player count giving this one an event game status, we do play it at least once a year at our annual board gaming retreat in the summer.

Worker placement games are a big thing in my gaming group, though this affection is not usually led by me, but rather certain mega fans of the mechanic in my gaming group. The result is that I have played countless worker placement games over the years and despite all of that available comparison I still think Empires: Age of Discovery is the single best worker placement game I have ever played.

Competitive, not just in a “race” way most worker placement games boil down to but in a more confrontational way. It has a very challenging puzzle to resolve in particular if you play with a full spread of 6 players. Above all else its ultra-simple to teach so really any six players will do, most people get this game right away and can play it reasonably competitively on their first go.

If you like worker placement games and you haven’t played this one yet, you are in for a treat!

6. Through The Ages: A New Story of Civilization

It looks like a Euro game because it is one, but that is just one of Through The Ages many layers. This is a deeply strategic game that has countless paths to victory.

Through the Ages is without question one of my all-time favorite games to get to the table, not only because I love civilization-building games, but from a design perspective I think this is one of the most intriguing and exciting mechanics in board games. I play this game at every opportunity but it drops on my all-time favorite list because it has two inherent and related problems that make it tough to get to the table. The length of the playtime vs. player count.

This is a game that takes 8+ hours to play which puts it square into the “event” game space. Simultaneously this game is best with 2-3 players, which isn’t much of an event. For me personally, with the size of my gaming group this is a real problem area. If I’m having an event at my house where we are going to spend all day playing a game, its unlikely I would end up with such a small player count. 4-6 players is far more typical, more if word gets out.

The result is that this game gets played once in a blue on those rare occasions when I have an event day at my house and we end up short on player count. It happens and I love it when it does, but not often.

That is not a flaw of the game, its just the reality of my compatibility with this game. I love it, its awesome and I have no guilt or reservations about putting it into my favorite games of all time list. There is an ipad/iphone app for this one, its perfect replication of the game, its a great way to try it out.

5. Empire of the Sun

Empire of the Sun is a very complex game and is not recommended for the uninitiated, even among serious historical war games this one asks for a lot. Once you learn to play this monster, however, you will not be able to deny its brilliance.

My instinct is to put this one much higher on the list, from a perspective of appreciation, design and sheer experience, this should be in the top 3 of my top 10 list but I have to be a little pragmatic here and say that Empire of the Sun is very difficult to get to the table. Strictly speaking I play it often, but I do so solo and since its not really a solo game, putting it in competition with games that I actually do play with other people just feels wrong.

I love this game and actually enjoy playing it a great deal solo but the complexity of this game, the sheer challenge to learn to play it correctly is so extreme that its nearly impossible to find an opponent willing to put in that effort. Its a real bummer because this IS one of the best games I have ever played. It hits my hobby table 3-4 times a year like clockwork and even as I write this mini assesement I’m itching to play it. Its deep and meaningful strategy combined with its amazing narrative telling of the Pacific Theatre is unmatched. I love this game but I acknowledge the complexity here is a real problem and takes an effort few are going to be willing to make. It just asks too much from a player, sometimes even a bit too much for me.

4. Paths of Glory

I play Paths of Glory quite a bit, far more than any other heavy and more serious historical war game on my shelf. I never tire of it, its considered a classic in the historical war game community and I can understand why.

While considerably less complex than Empire of the Sun (what isn’t), Paths of Glory too is a very heavy game. I have been fortunate however that I have a regular partner for this one so I actually play it a couple of times a year as well as playing it solo a couple of times a year.

It actually has a lot of similarities to Empire of the Sun, in a way it’s like a World War I version of a similar core concept. It’s also a card-driven game with multiple usage cards driven by operational level play. It uses point-to-point movement rather than hex movement which simplifies it a great deal but it also generally has a lot fewer rules, in particular much fewer exception rules.

Generally, it just flows better and while it also requires a bit of dedication to learn to play, like Empire of the Sun the payoff here in terms of highly addictive and challenging gameplay merged with a fantastic narrative is unmatched. This is the definitive World War I game, though I will be the first to admit I have not actually played any others. I suppose it’s the same situation as Tide of Irons, I found THE World War I game so I sort of stopped searching.

If my recommendation counts, this is an amazing historical war game, or you know, you could listen to the 2 decades of fans praising the game instead.

3. Imperial Struggle

I can’t say I agree with the tagline “spiritual successor to Twilight Struggle”, but I do think this game stands on its own two feet and is without question one of the best games on my shelf.

This new arrival to the list debuts quite high, but while I can blame infatuation for Peloponnesian Wars entry to the list, this recent arrival has already proven its stamina well beyond a one-night stand. This member of the Twilight Struggle family absolutely blew me away the first time I played it, but dozens of plays later I’m an even bigger fan. It just keeps getting better every time I play it and because I found myself a regular partner I get to play this one quite often and at peek competitiveness.

There is no question in my mind that Imperial Struggle is here to stay and though it falls into the Historical War Game genre (arguably) and it does have a very fascinating theme based on a really interesting piece of history, this game is really all about deep and meaningful strategic gameplay. That is its center, that is what makes it an unsolvable puzzle that is refreshed with every replay. Easily the single best game of 2020, I have no reservation about its appearance this high on the list.

2. Lord of the Rings The Living Card Game

I find myself apologizing for liking this game to a lot of my friends who don’t really get my obsession with this one. I don’t know what to say, sometimes a game that just does it for you.

Lord of the Rings The Living Card Game has been at or near the top of my all-time favorites list since its debut and my introduction to it back in 2017. I own almost everything for this collectible card game, most years it’s my often played game and there are times when I go months at a time playing 2-3 games a night. I generally play it solo, but I do enjoy it with two or small groups.

This is a very strange entry on my list and I feel I like I make this general disclaimer every time I talk about this game. It is the opposite of me. Generally speaking, I don’t like collectible games, I usually hate CCG’s in particular and I can count on one hand minus some fingers the number of cooperative games that I have enjoyed.

This one is an exception on all counts which I think illustrates what I consider the better half of my personality and approach to the hobby, an ability to try anything and keep an open mind. When my friends roped me into trying this one I was not excited, but after a few rounds, Lord of the Rings LCG became an immediate obsession.

Deeply challenging, highly dynamic, constantly evolving and wildly immersive this game has it everywhere it counts. I honestly can’t get enough and while there are times when I think to myself… ok I’m done with this now, a few months go by and it’s back on my table. It comes around again and again. Love it!

1. War Room

There is no doubt in my mind and I say this without reservation, this is the single best board game in existence.

Finally, my absolute favorite game of all time (at the moment), War Room by Larry Harris. Man I love this game!

I did a first impression and review of this game, so if you are interested in why this game is such a revelation for me, that is about as detailed an explanation I can offer.

The short version is that this is a mega event game that is tailor-made for me and my group’s style of play. Strategically it’s on a grand scale covering the entirety of the World War II military conflict. It uses hidden orders (pre-programming) which I think just does wonders for strategy games in my opinion. It has a tactically minded resolution system without being overwhelming allowing combat resolution to move at a reasonable pace with a simple enough system that everyone can chuck dice and enjoy it. Most of all however it’s thematically rich with big events taking place every round inspiring narrative imagery and creating stories at the table you’ll be talking about long after the game is over.

I recognize and acknowledge that this is not going to be a game for every type of player or every type of group, but for me and my friends, this just tickles every desire and hope we have for a great event game. It’s big, broad, deep and exciting all wrapped up in an obscenely over-the-top visual presentation that’s simply fun to be around. I’m not going to say always and forever, but I have my doubts about this one being challenged for the top spot anytime soon.

The Fallout

Several games drop off my radar and I always like to leave some commentary as to why.

The Song of Ice and Fire is perhaps the greatest tragedy in gaming. A miniature game that went from the best on the market to a complete and utter clusterfuck inside of a year. Me and my group still enjoy playing it using the old rules and old balance the game had though we have our complaints there as well, but the updated rules and changes that have been made to the game are a complete disaster. The game is outright broken under the new rules and CMON as a publisher leave lot to be desired releasing everything not weeks or months but years behind schedule.

Vampire: The Masquerade Heritage also leaves the list though this should not surprise anyone given that it’s a legacy game. Once you have played through it once, it’s pretty much over permanently and you will have no reason to play it again and even if you wanted to you have to purchase a new copy. It was a nice fling and I did enjoy my time with it, but it never had any hope of being a permanent resident on the list.