Next 5 Best Board Games of 2023

10. Ecosystem: Savana

This one is almost a bit of a cheat to put on the list. I got it in really recently and I have played it a few times. It’s more of a cheat because I knew I would like the game. I own Ecosystem and Ecosystem: Coral Reef, both of which I really like. So of course, a new version of the game I would like as well. It’d have been a surprise if I hadn’t.

Well, needless to say, I did. I think this one did some interesting things. It forces you to flip more cards down so by the end they are face down, but you still get to use them for scoring. So when you score a lion or a cheetah you flip prey cards face down. And I believe that the cheetah scores first, so it can mean that the Lion, which scores more points, isn’t able to score. The cheetah beats it to all the tasty gazelle.

9. Black Hole Buccaneers

This is one that I don’t even own. But for a game that I don’t own, I kind of wish that I did. The reason I don’t own it is that it’s a drafting game, which I love drafting games, but I own a lot of them. and Black Hole Buccaneers is a little bit more complex, which still having a light and goofy theme.

Mainly, it has a drafting element where you can be stuck with negative points just by a card that you’re given at the end. But otherwise it’s a pretty interactive drafting system. I need to know what you’re doing or what you’re taking. I can just ignore the one that I might bust on and hope it goes well anyways. And it would balance out with a lot of powers and scoring that stacks as you go along. But when it comes to drafting games, it won’t beat out others that I have already.

8. Cursed!?

Next up is a small solo game, Cursed!?. This one is a pretty simple push your luck type of game. You find that you’ve been cursed by a witch. To break the curse, you need to provide her with eight souls and quickly.

The mechanisms are basically flipping cards against monsters and seeing if your attack can add up to their health. The twist on it comes with the idea that busting is bad. You don’t want to overkill them, you just want to take them out. For each point under you are, you burn that many cards. So someone has eight health, I do six, I burn two cards. Well, if I flip and I go over, I remove the card I flipped and still burn two cards. So I burn extra cards. I like that bit of strategy to figure out when the push or not.

7. Skytear Horde

Next up a solo game that I played on Malts and Meeples, Skytear Horde. This is one that after I played it a few times, I went all in on the Gamefound campaign that happened this past year. It’s more content, which I’m not sure the game needed, but won’t be bad to have. And a better storage system for all of it.

The game itself is a horde battler. You need to wipe out a main boss, but a lot of what you’re doing is fighting against hordes. And you do that while also managing the hand of cards that you have, because you don’t get to draw new cards all that often, or all that many. So you need to set up your defenses to stop the enemy hordes while keeping enough back for what comes next.

This game can play solo or multiplayer, but I really like it as a solo game. The enemy system is simple enough that it’s fast to run and with that it makes it easier to table. It isn’t a small game or the fastest game to get originally set-up, but once it is, the game play works well and it’s easy to reset.

6. SpellBook

Finally, the best of the bottom half of my Top 10 of 2023, yeah, that’s long, is SpellBook. This one maybe could sneak into my top half with more plays. It’s an engine building spell casting game. You are learning spells so that you can cast them, and you can get each spell into your spellbook one time. Well, do you wait for the higher point scoring, better powered one, or do you hold off on it? There’s a timing and push your luck element to it.

And then there is your familiar. They should all be cats, but they aren’t, still it’s fun to play as they don’t really do anything. Your familiar is another way to score points and push for the end of the game. If you completely feed your familiar, you end the game there and all the spells cast and level of familiar are tallied up for points. Otherwise once someone has cast their final spell the game ends.

I like how you can push for the end of the game multiple ways. It isn’t just the end of the game, it’s that you can push for very different scoring. You might mainly ignore casting spells, just getting the one or few that help you add tokens to your familiar faster to push the end game that way. And there are different combinations of spells you can use, so as long as everyone has the same one, you can play around with that.

Final Thoughts

This was a fun year to play board games. I am pleased with the number of 2023 titles that I got in, and I know that I have more that I need to play. And I realized that there are two campaign games from 2023 that I hadn’t rated yet, but I’ll just leave them off as Vampire the Masquerade: Chapters and Isofarian Guard would definitely had made my Top 10, if not my Top 5. So it’s too late to go back and correct that.

So there are a lot of good board games this year and a lot of good ones that I want to play. Witcher the Old World, Earth, Thunder Road Vendetta and more all need to get played. That is some of why you’ll see a future article about how I want to work through my shelf of shame or opportunity or to be played. I just own a lot of board games that I’m excited to play, so I don’t need to buy more I need to play them.

What were some of your favorites board games from 2023?

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How Ecosystem Works

Let’s start out by looking at how Ecosystem, both versions work in similar ways. Both of them are tableau building and drafting games. You draft a card from a hand and you then put it into a five wide by four tall grid. The card must go adjacent to another card that you’ve already placed.

Each card that you place, animal or feature of your ecosystem provides points in different ways. Some of them give you points for being adjacent to other animals or terrain types. Others give you points for having the most of them or the size of group that you have. Whomever has the most points at the end of the game wins.

The Differences

I’m not going to go over similarities, I kind of already did. I’m going to focus in on the main differences of the two. And I think that there’s one main area where there are differences. But first, the minor area of differences. While some of the scoring is similar, it is not all the same. Some of the scoring is quite different and that’s expected as it isn’t clearly a reskin.

The one area where the games differ is how they encourage diversity in your ecosystem. Like in the real world, it’d collapse if the balance isn’t right. And both of the games handle it a different way. In Ecosystem, you want to have the biggest variety. That gives you points the more variety that you have. And it adds in a challenge for scoring because to get that diversity you won’t build an ideal tableau.

For Ecosystem: Coral Reef it is a bit trickier, but easier once you know what is going on. The scoring of all the cards is split into four categories. Three of them matter for this end game scoring bonus. The end game scoring bonus looks at the three categories of producer, prey, and predator. The one that you score lowest in gives you that number of points again as a bonus. So you want to make sure that none of the categories are ignored.

Should You Own Both?

I think this will depend on the group. I say that pretty often, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t true. With Ecosystem, it is basically the same game. But owning both offers more variety to the game. It is kind of like having an expansion for the game in some ways. I pick which set of cards I want to play with. But I don’t need to spend my time teaching a new game.

That said, that is how it works for me. It is very possible, and I’d say likely, that most people won’t need to own Ecosystem. It is only if it is a game that you play a lot, and a mechanism that you like a lot. If you find yourself feeling like you’ve played one enough, it might be worthwhile to add the second. Or to replace the first one with the second.

Final Thoughts on Ecosystem vs Ecosystem: Coral Reef

If you want to buy one, I’m not going to tell you which one is better. They are, when it comes down to it, basically the same game. I think that whichever you pick, pick the theme or ecosystem that you like better. It is a game, though, that I think a lot of people will like. The mechanisms of Ecosystem are simple, and the artwork is nice.

And I find that there are a lot of good strategies for the game, some more powerful than others. But that is on the players to make a balanced ecosystem and keep someone from running away with a strategy. Both of the games have a strategy like that, so there isn’t one that is easier or better that way. I know for some that might be a turnoff, and maybe it doesn’t make perfect sense for the ecosystem theme, but both games do try and balance that out with their ecosystem diversity scoring.

So, no, I think that most people won’t need both of them. But at the same time, if you want the variety and are like me, both do offer different scoring and a little bit of a different time while being very easy to swap between them as you play.

Do you like one better than the others?

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