Top 10 Campaign Games

10 – Marvel Champions: The Mad Titan’s Shadow

I had to put one of the campaign boxes onto this list for Marvel Champions. There are a number of them, a Spider-Man one, a Red Skull one, Guardians of the Galaxy, soon to be Mutants as well. But I went with The Mad Titan’s Shadow just because that box feels the most epic. And I can take anyone into that one and it makes sense thematically.

I’ve heard that these are lighter campaigns which is not a bad thing. It means that I could and maybe will, set it up sometime and just play it over a few evenings. And you know I’m going to be running Thor up against them, or maybe Doctor Strange. There are enough characters know that it might actually be a tricky decision.

9 – Massive Darkness 2

I picked this one up because it did have a campaign. And I want to get it to the table, at least for scenarios fairly soon. I like that you level up a lot in this game, and the minis are cool, the classes are cool, the weapons are cool.

Plus, this is also a lighter game. You don’t need to know nearly as much how to play it as some of the other games on the list. That means that even if I don’t play it as a campaign soon, it’s probably one I can sit down and knock out a scenario with some friends easily in an evening.

8 – Reichbusters: Projekt Vril

One that I also need to sort some more, which is why I haven’t played it yet. Reichbusters came out with an errata pack for improved card wording and rules. But because that was coming, I waited on playing it. Now I own it and, well, I need to sort the cards in.

This is going to be a game of sneaking into enemy base and trying to stop their experiments. Think kind of Howling Commandos vs Hydra, if I were to take it over to Marvel. There are crazy experiments going on, and monsters you need to fight. But every mission has an objective and if you’re too noisy, well, things are going to go sideways for you fast and you’ll get swarmed. So it’s not a guns blazing game, which I think sounds interesting.

7 – Betrayal Legacy

I did put a few legacy games on the list. Legacy games are campaign games too, and it surprised me a little bit, but the one at the bottom of that is Betrayal Legacy. I love Betrayal at House on the Hill, even with it’s wonky scenarios and problems with sometimes the traitor being too strong, sometimes the other characters. And I want to see what the legacy one has to offer.

I am really curious about the legacy aspect of it. You play as a family versus a character coming back generation after generation. I want to know how that plays out in the game. I think it could offer some cool game options and ways to progress and tell a bit story.

6 – Descent: Legends of the Dark

Moving back to just a campaign game, we have Descent: Legends of the Dark from Fantasy Flight Games. This is going to be their Descent, but not third edition, game, of exploring tiles, fighting monsters, and interacting on the map.

Like a lot of bigger Fantasy Flight games in recent history, Mansions of Madness, Journeys in Middle-Earth, and Star Wars: Imperial Assault, there is an app piece. I like it for this game, it was a bit much in Journeys in Middle-Earth, but in Descent it offers some fog of war. It is in that category of games like Massive Darkness 2 for me. It looks like a blast to play as a fun dice chucking game.

5 – Folklore: The Affliction

Now moving into another bigger game, and I think the top 5, with the exception of the legacy ones, are the heaviest of the campaign games that I own, at least right now. Of course there are more coming in. But Folklore: The Affliction is going to be a game that borrows a lot from pen and paper RPG’s. You roll more than a standard six sided die. And that is intriguing to me.

Plus, I like that it’s a darker setting. I don’t need all my fantasy to be grim and dark, but sometimes that is what I want. And since I always am the Dungeon Master for D&D, I believe that it’ll give me that RPG feel without me needing to be in charge of everything. Though, if I paly it solo, I will be, but I’ll be doing the same thing as the players.

4 – Aeon’s End: Legacy of Gravehold

Another Legacy game and this one just came in from Indie Boards & Cards. I played through the first Aeon’s End Legacy on stream. And I had a blast with that game. Plus, just in general I really like Aeon’s End, so much so that I keep on backing and tracking down everything for it.

Legacy of Gravehold is going to be another legacy campaign. Where I knew a little bit of the campaign for the original Aeon’s End Legacy, I know nothing about the story this time. I just know that the box is bigger and heavier. That probably means more cards, but I’m hoping for more story as well.

3 – Clank! Legacy

And the other legacy game is Clank! Legacy. This one is higher for me just because I want to play it with some friends. I love the Acquisitions Inc theme on it as their game play is hilarious. And I suspect that the humor in the game will be great as well. Plus, I like the system that it is built upon. I prefer Clank! In! Space! to Clank I think, but the legacy version with the fantasy theme, I’m still there for it.

This is a deck building push your luck game. You are going into it trying to complete missions and get treasures. And it’s competitive in that you are trying to be the best so that you can end up with the franchise within Acquisitions Inc. I have to imagine that the whole of the story is going to be goofy, and it sounds like there is a lot to unlock so that is exciting as well.

2 -Middara: Unintentional Malum

A huge box with two more huge boxes on the way. I give that as my excuse for not getting it to the table sooner, I want Acts II and III to show up as well. But really, it’s just such a table hog and such a big game, I am not sure that I want to play it solo, but I really do want to play it.

Middara has more of an anime style to it’s game look. The artwork, and from what I can tell, the world building and story look fairly anime. It is going to be a leveling up, dice chunking, monster fighting, dungeon crawling game. And I think it’s going to be one that I find to be a lot of fun to get to the table and play. But like I said, I suspect the game would work best with four players, or two players controlling two characters each.

1 – Stars of Akarios

Call me cult of the new if you want, and it’d be fair in this case. But I am excited to plays Stars of Akarios. This is a big space exploration and adventure game. What really intrigues me is how it is split into two parts. There is that space exploration and then you can be down on an planet as well. That is intriguing.

It also looks like it uses a combination of cards for modifying your attacks and things but also uses dice. And just the production quality on the game is great. While it is a big game, compared to some of the others, it looks like it should be easier to play solo. And I want to get it to the table and play it on Malts and Meeples.

Final Thoughts

I say this almost any time I talk about a campaign game. And I feel like I can redo this list in different ways pretty often. But I have a lot of them coming in. 15 more campaign games in fact, which is a lot. Now some can be played as more of a one off situation such as Primal: The Awakening. Otherwise might be smaller sit down and play a campaign of it in a sitting, Spire’s End: Hildegard. But most of them are going to be much much bigger than that.

Just to show everything that is coming, and there is a lot, in alphabetical order, we have:

1. The 7th Citadel
2. Arydia: The Paths We Dare Tread
3. Chronicles of Drunagor
4. Divinus
5. Ehterfields
6. Frosthaven
7. HEL: The Last Saga
8. ISS Vanguard
9. Mythwind
10. Oathsworn: Into the Deepwood
11. Primal: The Awakening
12. Sleeping Gods: Distant Skies
13. Spire’s End: Hildegard
14. Valor & Villainy: Lludwik’s Labyrinth
15. Vampire: The Masquerade – Chapters

What campaign games do you own, if any, that you want to get played?

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Ranking My Fantasy Games

46: The Red Dragon Inn

This should be a game that I like more than I do, it’s basically a hand management game around drinking in a bar after you’ve been out adventuring and gambling to win money and getting in fights. And I suspect I do I like this game more than I think. I just don’t like it at high player counts. Most of the time when I play The Red Dragon Inn it is over the recommended player count, to me this is a 4 player game only. I don’t want fewer, I don’t want more. At four, it’d feel like good silly fun and not a slog.

45: God of War: The Card Game

God of War is another theme in a game that I should love, but the game around it wasn’t that great. The deck building was interesting in the game. But the card play and the monsters that you fight, those aren’t all that interesting. It feels like the game was meant for mass market without hitting mass market. Or it’s a weird area in between mass market and hobby.

44: Kodama: The Tree Spirits

This is one that barely falls into the fantasy area. Yes, it does have the tree spirits, but that’s barely part of the game. It’s more about building out trees trying to create runs of the different things that you want. In concept it’s not that bad, and in game play it is okay. Kodoma is one of those games where I think a lot of people will enjoy it, and it’s not a bad game, but it won’t be many people’s favorite game.

43: Stuffed Fables

This is a game, in Stuffed Fables, I should maybe have given more tries. The theme of a being stuffed animals and toys of a kid trying to get their blanket back that was stolen, super cute. And the game was cute when I played it, but also more complex than it should be. I get what Plaid Hat Games is doing with their adventure book games, but with changing rules it just made it more complex than I wanted.

42: SeaFall

SeaFall, people would probably put that to the bottom of their lists because it is not a good legacy game. Though, legacy games, to me, have higher standards than most other games. If I am only going to get a limited use out of it, it needs to be epic. I liked the mechanics pretty well though they needed to be less punishing. But the story was a bit too scattered, though, with some tweaking, could be made better.

41: Near and Far

Well, I just wrapped up Sleeping Gods, that isn’t on the list yet, so I like it better. For me, Near and Far is a cool concept, a cool world, and just falls flat. The game has story, and even vignettes of story like Sleeping Gods, but it’s more mechanics than anything. And I think since it’s competitive the game couldn’t get away from the mechanics as much as how you score points.

40: Legacy of Dragonholt

Legacy of Dragonholt is another one of those games that isn’t bad, but could have been better. The system for an RPG/Choose Your Own Adventure game is fun. The story is okay, and that’s what kept me from diving back into it. It wasn’t that the concept of the story wasn’t good, but the execution of it felt too YA (young adult) and not a well written YA story, but one that got published because other YA books similar were well done and popular. I’d love to see Fantasy Flight come back to this system, keep some of the ideas and just improve the writing.

39: Fae

Fae is a fantasy game in cover art only. It is really an abstract game where you are a fae creature who is then hidden from everyone else and you try and score the most points. The game is good, and I like the challenge of trying to score points but not make it too obvious so that people tank your fae’s scoring. A clever idea and very abstract.

38: Legends of Andor

Another game that was in my collection and then left. And another one that is fun, it is an efficiency puzzle of how you get through the story as effectively as possible so you don’t trigger end game too early. My issue with it is only a me issue, I have too many campaign games. I let it go when I realized I would only ever play the starting scenario at least for right now. When I have capacity for that campaign, then I might get it back.

37: Sword & Sorcery

Sword & Sorcery left my collection, but that’s because I did play through the campaign. It is a fun campaign but one that I knew I wouldn’t revisit. The depth of game play is fun for a lighter dice chucking game. And the story is also light, well, in terms of the decisions that you make. I wish the story branched more, and that your powers would change up more, because once you found a few good things, you just did those.

36: Shadows of Brimstone: City of the Ancients

Shadows of Brimstone is one that hasn’t left my collection as a campaign game, but maybe should. The only issue is that I need to glue the figures back together. My first gluing didn’t stick as well as it should have, because I didn’t use the right glue. But also, it’s a theme that I don’t have games for, the weird west. So monsters and other worlds all messing with the old west. I love that theme and there aren’t many games or good books that I’ve found with it.

35: Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth

Another campaign game, and another one that left my collection just because I wasn’t going to get to it anytime soon. But it’s Lord of the Rings, and app assisted from Fantasy Flight Games. The story was fun that I did play through. The writing was well done, which I appreciated, and you can see is something that’s important to me. Definitely a good one for Lord of the Ring fans, which I am.

34: Krosmaster: Arena

This is a skirmish game with fantasy characters casting spells, summoning monsters, and hacking and slashing away. I like that you pick and build the teams that you play with. I like the dice rolling and how you can play with secondary objectives so it’s not just knock out your opponent. But you can play just with knocking people out as well. Krosmaster is one I would keep but I didn’t have people to play it with, and now I have another skirmish game or two that I put over it.

33: Too Many Bones

This one will probably move up the list when my Gamefound comes in for the latest expansions. Not that I own any other Too Many Bones, but that might start me getting more. This is kind of a short campaign game where you fight some battles and then fight against a boss. But where the game really shines is how you build up your characters. Each of them do different things, and how you level them up gives you room to explore a character multiple times. Plus it’s a different fantasy world than anything else out there.

32: Lord of the Rings: Journey To Mordor

This is a roll and write game, but it is a fun little one. Not one that I own or one that I’d go and seek out to add to my roll and write collection. But Journey to Mordor basically has you advancing your Hobbit on their journey to Mordor while trying not to let the Nazgul get you. Very simple roll and write but it has a little more player interaction, so it feels different than some.

31: The Hobbit

Speaking of Hobbits, we have The Hobbit. This is a competitive game about dwarves trying to get treasure, which is kind of what the book is as well. I like the mechanics where you are leveling up skills based off of cards you play. But you want to balance it so everyone levels up because you can’t defeat the monsters all by yourself. So it’s semi-cooperative, but not in a way that someone is working against the group, it’s just that sometimes you let another person get the better thing.

30: Deadly Doodles

Another roll and write game, and this one I think has dropped a little on my list. It’s a good simple roll and write where you are trying to get treasures, find weapons and defeat monsters. And what you do gives you points. There are some different dungeons which add in more things to do as well, which I need to play around with.

29: The Lord of the Rings

And even more Lord of the Rings, this is the classic Fantasy Flight Game. I like how it plays through the books. And you play as the Hobbits taking the ring to Mordor. It is fairly abstracted, but the locations you go and the scenes you play through are all very Lord of the Rings, so it feels more thematic than just with what you are doing. Plus it’s a really tough cooperative game and I like those.

28: Titan Race

Normally I don’t love games that have a lot of in your face, try and mess the other person over, but Titan Race is a lot of fun. This is a fast game and a silly game with great fantasy in it. Titan Race is very silly and I like how the tracks work. You can either do a race where you loop over the same board over and over again, or you can do a grand prix and go over three boards and each board does different things. And those things make the game even sillier.

27: Claim

Claim is a two player trick taking game which is odd. Plus the first hand you play doesn’t actually give you a score, it is how you build your hand for trick taking. It’s such a clever idea and I like that it plays really fast. The fantasy theme comes in that the different suits are fantasy races. And each of those fantasy races has it’s own powers, or they might. Some of them there are just more of, whereas others have powers. A knight always beats a goblin, for example. So it puts even more of a twist on trick taking in a way I really enjoy.

26: Paper Dungeons: A Dungeon Scrawler

I don’t know where this one will end up, so middle of the list is good for right now. I don’t know where it’s going to end up because I’ve only played this roll and write game once. And I liked it a lot, it’s a dungeon crawler as a roll and write. But as compared to Deadly Doodles where you go into a dungeon and cross over stuff, you do a lot more in this game. You level up your heroes, you have powers and abilities, you craft items and brew potions. And the better you do in other things, better you can explore. A lot going on, but not too hard.

25: Skulk Hollow

Skulk Hollow is a game of woodland creatures, the Foxen, fighting against a Guardian. It’s a two player only game and one that is very asymmetrical. As the guardian my goal might change from game to game, depending on which guardian I am. And the Foxen, well they always want to beat down the Guardian. And the Foxen can change up depending on who their leader is. Really cute game and fast to learn and play.

24: Silver

I think I say this every time I talk about Silver, but it reminds me of a game I played growing up with a deck of cards. In Silver you have a village in front of you and you want the lowest score possible. You know what two of the cards are in your village. You don’t know the other three. So now you swap cards out or play them for powers to get rid of cards in your village and lower your score. It’s simple, it’s fun, there’s a lot of take that, yet it feels nostalgic in a good way.

23: Clank!: A Deck-Building Adventure

Clank is a fun push your luck, deck building, dungeon delving game. You want to get the best treasure that you can, but as you get cards, make noise, and well, annoy the dragon because it’s their horde, now the dragon starts damaging you. So you could jump in, grab the first thing you see and run, but if someone else can make it out, now they have more points and better treasure than you. Really fun game and easy enough to play for most people.

22: Deranged

Deranged might fall more into a horror game. But there is a magical gate and fantastical monsters who are out to get you. And you yourself can become one of those fantastical monsters if you don’t deal with your curses and get out in time, why, because you might become Deranged. The game has a lot going on, but I like the dual use cards and the theme of the game. A little horror I’m most certainly interested.

21: Village Attacks

Village Attacks is another darker themed game because you for sure are the monsters. And after a long day of terrifying villagers, you are ready to settle down. But nope, here some villagers to break down your door because clearly you’re the monsters, not the people trying to trash your place. That sounds light, and I find it silly, but it is themed dark. Still a very nice tower defense type of game.

20: The Grimm Masquerade

Themed with Grimm Fairy Tales, The Grimm Masquerade is a deduction game. You are each a masked party goer, one of the Grimm characters. You are of course looking for something, a glass slipper for Cinderella, but also have something you don’t want. Can you get what you need or make everyone else bust before they figure out who you are?

19: Ascension: Deckbuilding Game

Another deck building game, Ascension is fantasy themed. Really, like most pure deck building games, it’s about building up an engine that gives you points. I just like this fantasy theme and variability of it better than something like Dominion. But that’s not what we’re talking about. This lets you get heroes and casters and sages and constructions to fight monsters, get more income and buy more cards. I like that it offers a ton of different strategy for the game.

18: Res Arcana

Res Arcana is another in theme only fantasy games. You are basically building out an engine to get points and who can do it better to get points faster. I like it though with the theme of brewing potions and dragons and places of power. It makes it feel different, and I also like that you only have 8 cards to make your engine with.

17: The Dresden Files Cooperative Card Game

The Dresden Files are my favorite fantasy series. I love the world that Jim Butcher has created. The game, it does a good job of giving you the pieces of that world. But you need to know the world to connect them together. So it’s not the best fantasy game or story game for everyone, but if you know the series, it’s a lot of fun to play.

16: Small World

Small World is Risk with fantasy creatures, crazy powers, and well, a whole lot more fun. What really works is that this is a small board. The game is in your face, but it’s in everyone’s face. The option of hiding away in Australia is gone that you’d have in Risk. Plus, you get crazy combos. Flying Halflings, Seafaring Giants, Wealthy Trolls, all of them are possible. Really accessible game too for most new gamers.

15: The Lost Expedition

This one is on the list because of the expansions and promo cards. I don’t think in the base game there is anything too fantastical, but werewolves, fountain of youth, yeah, those are fantasy. This is all about surviving to get to the lost city of Z. The game is a really good cooperative one that if you have someone who is a alpha player, it keeps them from being too much of one.

14: Century: Golem Edition

This is another one where the theme is fantasy, but game play doesn’t really shine through on that. Still, the artwork and gem pieces are great, and I wouldn’t want a different theme. It’s a hand management game where you are building up cards in your hand to use them to turn gems into other gems until you get the right combinations to get golems. And the golems at the end of the game give you points. What is so amazing about this game is that turns are super fast, so while there are good decisions to be made, it doesn’t take long to get back to your turn.

13: Potion Explosion

We’ve all probably seen the app games where you get like colors to touch and that removes them from the board and if more hit, those are removed as well. That is what Potion Explosion is. You are making crazy potions by pulling dice and trying to get the like colors to hit. Light game with a great table presence.

12: Root

Root was one where I was thinking, is this actually fantasy. Well, let’s see, it’s animals fighting and building, so yes, that seems like fantasy. But really, it’s a confrontational game where you fight it out with your group trying to get points to win the game with everyone trying to keep everyone else in check. Great asymmetrical game, just know it’ll take some time to teach. And don’t let the artwork fool you, this is not a nice sweet happy game.

11: Roll Player

Roll Player is a game about making your Dungeons and Dragons (or Generic RPG) character. You draft dice to put them into various stats for your class. It’s a lot of fun as you try and match up colors and get the numbers right to score more points. Plus you buy up gear and abilities which can influence your stats or points as well. And that’s the game, it’s about building up your character.

10: Spire’s End

Spire’s End, coming soon to Malts and Meeples is a story adventure game. In Spire’s End you wake up to find a spire has appeared at the edge of your town and many people are missing. You and others go into the tower, fight monsters, make choices, and generally go on a weird and dark adventure. Really like this one as a solo game.

9: Super Fantasy Brawl

Super Fantasy Brawl, it’s in the name that it’s fantasy. Super Fantasy Brawl is a two player skirmish game where you are trying to complete objectives in an arena and knock out your opponents. Complete objectives, get trophies. Knock out your opponent, get trophies. The first to five wins. What I really like is the turn speed, you play up to three cards, one of each color and do what it says on the cards. And the cards you play determine who moves. Light game but very tactical in how you play.

8: Cartographers

The second game I have in the Roll Player world, won’t be the last. But Cartographers is a roll and write game where you are making a map of the land. And you get points for making it in certain ways. Forests surrounding mountains might give you a point or two, things like that. What makes it fantastical is that you put monsters on the map as well. And you don’t put your own down, you put them on your opponents board in the worst spot for them to make them score negative points.

7: Sleeping Gods

Sleeping Gods, well, you can watch me play this one I just wrapped it up over on Malts and Meeples. Sleeping Gods is a big adventure game where you, as the crew of the Manticore are transported to a new world. You want to get home, but in order to do that you must awaken the sleeping gods and all you know is that totems might help with that, not where to find them. So it’s really a sandbox game of exploring, finding quests, fighting monsters and more.

6: Roll Player Adventures

Roll Player Adventures, the final Roll Player world game, this is an adventure game set in the world of Roll Player, using mechanics or dice mechanics that feel like Roll Player, and it’s really good. I really like that Roll Player Adventures is an easy game to learn and a lighter game to play. A lot of the big adventure games can have a lot to keep track of and a lot of tokens. Roll Player Adventures has enough, but not too much. And the world you play in isn’t too dark.

5: Aeon’s End

Aeon’s End is another deck building game and the highest on the list. This is a cooperative game where you play as breach mages trying to fight off nemesis that come through. The game does two really interesting things for me. Firstly, you never shuffle your deck. So when you discard cards you can kind of put them in an order. And the other is that turn order is random. There is a deck, in a two player game, which has two activations for each character and two for the Nemesis. On a really bad draw you could go twice with each character and then two Nemesis turns, plus then shuffle that up again and two more Nemesis turns.

4: Lords of Hellas

Lords of Hellas is fantasy in the future, or mythology in the future. It’s a cyber world of Greek gods. An odd setting with some amazing miniatures and mechanical creatures. But a really good game with some rough edges and a lot of ways to win. To me that is one of the best parts of the game where you are able to win in a number of different ways. You might fight monsters or build and control a monument or take over areas, how you play is up to you and the powers you have.

3: Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon

Tainted Grail, if Roll Player is light fantasy or happy fantasy, Tainted Grail is very dark fantasy. The world of Avalon is falling apart, the Menhir that drove back the wyrdness are failing and you aren’t sent out to stop it. You are sent out to find out what happened to the people who are better equipped to do this than you. But the story in Tainted Grail is amazing and one that I highly recommend people track down, which can be hard. Also know that this is a survival game with a ton of story, if you want the story, play in storymode, I am.

2: Dice Throne

Odd one to put on the list but Dice Throne is very much fantasy. It is fantasy head to battling in almost a Mortal Kombat type setting but it is still fantasy. My Pyromancer is going to blast your Barbarian with fire or then there is a Seraph or a Treant or a Gunslinger, all sorts of things, and you can take any of them up against each other. I’m so excited, it isn’t that far out to when Marvel Dice Throne will be delivered, several months but not that far. And Marvel Dice Throne is compatible and can be played with everything else I already have.

1: Gloomhaven

Finally, my #1 game of all time, Gloomhaven, This is a massive fantasy game of dungeon crawling combat. It is amazing and what really makes it is the card play. You pick two cards to play, one will determine how fast you go. Then when you go you use the top of one card and the bottom of the others to move and attack, so you can set yourself up for some epic turns or make it flexible to cover a changing board state. And there are so many different characters that are interesting to play as.

Final Thoughts

I love fantasy as a theme. A lot of my favorite series are fantasy for books in particular. And for board games, there are a lot of games that use the fantasy theme. But when you get down to some of my favorite games of all time, the big fantasy games are hard to beat. I think that my Top 3 games are all fantasy games. And I even skipped some games, like stuff in the Lovecraftian Mythos because while they are fantasy, I feel they are more horror. Maybe I’ll do a horror game ranking soon.

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124-101

100 – 76

75 – 51

50 – 26

Unplayed Board Games – 25- 1

25: Folklore: The Affliction

Folklore is a campaign game that’s been on my shelf for quite a while. It’s one that I know I’ll likely need to play solo to get played so it might show up on the Malts and Meeples YouTube channel coming up here. But it’s basically an RPG type game in a box. Like a HEXplore It, it is going to give more of that die rolling feel you’d expect from a pen and paper RPG. Plus it’s about vampires, werewolves, and ghosts, fun stuff that I like.

24: Fox in the Forest

The smallest game in this section, Fox in the Forest is a two player trick taking game. I recently played the cooperative version of it and had a lot of fun . Fox in the Forest is competitive but one that works really well with two. I believe it balances out some of that by making taking all of the tricks a bad thing, so no shooting the moon. Or it needs to be done in a specific way. I like trick taking, just need to figure out which trick taking games will stick in my collection.

23: The Quacks of Quedlinburg

Another not huge game, The Quacks of Quedlinburg has been a really popular game over the past few years. It is a bag building game, by that I mean you add things to a bag, in this case cardboard tokens. And then you draw them out, and you are trying to make your potion grow. But if you get too many bad ingredients in there, it explodes and you get fewer rewards. But the further you push down the track of adding ingredients, the more points you get.

22: Res Arcana

Res Arcana is an engine building game. It’s a smaller one though with a limited number of cards and the main goal of the game is to figure out how to turn out points. You do that through artifacts and spells and things that you might get out in front of you. The question of the game is, who can get their engine running the best.

21: Western Legends

Western Legends is back into the big games, not a campaign, but a massive sandbox game. In this game you play in the wild west and you can be a good guy bringing in trouble makers, delivering cattle, things like that. Or you can be a bad guy, rustle cattle, rob the bank, and things like that. And you can switch in the middle of the game. Western Legends lets you do anything in the pursuit of points and create your own wild west story.

20: Mechs vs Minions

Mechs vs Minions is an interesting game because it’s created by Riot Games. They are known best for League of Legends, and now Arcane a Netflix show set in that world. Mechs vs Minions is kind of set in that setting, from what I can tell. But it’s a programming wave where you set your Mechs on a path where they can take out the minions. The game plays in scenarios and it might be kill everything or it might be get this objective and get back out. It’s fully cooperative, and one that has been a grail game for me.

19: Cthulhu: Death May Die

I like Cthulhu, don’t know if he likes me. But Cthulhu: Death May Die is a game, kind of in the vein of Arkham Horror and Mansions of Madness, but this time from CMON. And it’s about investigating, fighting cultists and other horrors, and getting to be just insane enough that you’re powerful enough to kill the elder god at the end. Or maybe you’ll just go mad completely or die. I like the theme, and the difficulty level of the game looks really challenging.

18: Uprising: Curse of the Last Emperor

Speaking of a game that looks challenging, Uprising: Curse of the Last Emperor, is a 4x game in a fantasy world. I already had a game like that on the list, Heroes of Land, Air and Sea, but this has a twist on this. You don’t fight against each other. Instead, you all need to end with better scores than the two bad factions to win the game. This cooperative nature of the game really drew me to it. Because it’s not just everyone do better, but how do I do well enough but also don’t hinder your chances.

17: Black Rose Wars

Black Rose Wars is an intimidating game to get to the table. There are lots of cards in the game, and it’s actually another programming game. Like Mechs vs Minions you’re deciding what you do. But with this one, it’s a free for all. You are summoning monsters to the board, laying traps, slinging spells, and blowing up rooms. The first mage to a certain number of points, I believe, wins the game. But it’s more about the crazy and powerful things that you can do which makes me want to try it.

16: Descent: Legends of the Dark

Another big game, Descent: Legends of the Dark takes up basically a full Kallax cube by itself. And the box says Act 1 on it. This is going to be a story driven dungeon crawler of a game. But it’s from Fantasy Flight, so they used what they knew from their apps for Mansions of Madness, Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle Earth, and more to make even a better app. This really helps with the fog of war or not knowing what’s behind a door as you play. I’ve done a demo, but not enough to count as a play.

15: Betrayal Legacy

Betrayal Legacy is a game that’s been on my too play list for a while. It has two great things about it, first it’s a legacy game, and I love legacy games an their progressing story. Secondly, it’s based off of Betrayal at House on the Hill. A game that I know isn’t balanced, but it is still a game that I love. Not too many games do horror too well, and Betrayal often feels like a horror movie in so many great ways. So I’m excited to see what can be done with a bigger story.

14: Loup Garou

Now we’re looking at a game that is a book. Loup Garou from Van Ryder Games is a game in that you go through and make choices. You play as a character and they have stats. But in a lot of ways, it’s a choose your own adventure. It’s a graphic novel, so you read the text, look at what you can do, and that determines where you flip to. I don’t know why, since I got this at GenCon in 2019, I haven’t just played this. It’s solo only and it’d be easy to get through, probably with dying. I need to play this ASAP.

13: Under Falling Skies

Another solo game, Under Falling Skies was added to my collection more recently. This is almost Space Invaders the game. But it seems really intriguing as a puzzle, plus there is a comic that comes with it and a mini campaign. You place down dice in the game to activate different things. The trick is that the weaker things won’t do as much, but the stronger things, alien spaceships descend faster. It’s finding when you’re perfectly ready to do that one big thing, from what I can tell.

12: Nidavellir

Another smaller box game on the list. Nidavellir is a set collection and auction game. And there is one reason it is so high, and it’s not the Norse Mythology. But it is because of how the auction works. You have five coins. You use three of them to bid and two are at the bottom. If you put a zero as one of your bids, you can trade in the higher of the two left over coins to get the value of the two left over coins. So you can upgrade your money as you go. When do you tank a bid, taking whatever is left, to do that.

11: Sea of Legends

I think from here on out is all big games, or mainly. It isn’t all campaign games, though. Sea of Legends isn’t a campaign game, but it is an epic story game of pirates. What drew me to this game, besides wondering about the story the game promises, is three things. Those three things set up your story, but at the start of the game, you pick a Captain, a Nemesis and a Lover. And that all determines your story. So you end up with a lot of variability. Plus it’s pirates and adventure on the seas, so it’s a theme that I love and look for in board games.

10: Middara: Unintentional Malum Act 1

This one could be higher on the list. Middara does a lot of things that interest me. It is a campaign game. It does fog of war well. There is massive amounts of story. The theming is crazy space, fantasy, anime, all things that I’m down for. And let’s face it, I could just say it’s anime because a lot of anime is space fantasy and crazy. But this one looks really cool to get to the table and massive to get to the table. I need to find a group to play this one with.

9: Deep Madness

Deep Madness is a game that I can blame on Rolling Solo. This is a game that is not easy to track down, mainly because it was just on Kickstarter. And I own almost everything for it, but I haven’t played it. The madness should give you some idea as to the sort of game, but what I like is that this is set on a deep sea base. And monsters are coming in and have wiped out everyone. The corporation who built the base is now sending the team down to figure out what is going on. It’s a theme and horror that I love so much, I just need to play it.

8: Lost Ruins of Arnak

Now we’re back from campaign style games. Though, Deep Madness can be played as a scenario, but they are kind of linked. Lost Ruins of Arnak is a deck building worker placement game. I like deck building, and worker placement isn’t my normal thing, but not bad. Lost Ruins of Arnak just has a cool Indiana Jones vibe to it that drew me in. And I think the deck building and theme will make it work well for myself and my group.

7: The Ratcatcher: The Solo Adventure Game

So when I said that there might be one smaller game left, this is it. It’s an interesting game in that it’s a solo only game, three of them on the list, but it’s a big box. It honestly feels like a bigger box than the game should have. In this you are trying to catch rats and get cheese. If the rats get too much cheese, now a big bad rat comes out onto the board, and things are going to get scary. It’s again a solo game, so one that I should get played.

6: Solomon Kane

Back to massive games, Solomon Kane is one that’s been on lists of games that I want to play for a while. But some of that was also that I wanted to buy it. It came and went on Kickstarter while I wasn’t too active there. And it’s been delivering last year and now wave two this year, and I managed to get wave one stuff for it.

In Solomon Kane you don’t play as Solomon Kane, you play as virtues guiding him. And I think that concept is interesting. You can play it solo with one super virtue, or each player gets a virtue in a multiplayer game. And then you take him through stories. Really interesting with how it works with not controlling the main character.

5: Roll Player Adventures

Kind of a cheat for the list, I really like Roll Player Adventures, but I’ve only kind of played it. Roll Player Adventures, I got to play a demo of it at GenCon in 2019 while they were still doing playtesting of the game. But the game is a blast, and the story, I like, because it isn’t too heavy. It’s a big story game set in the Roll Player world, but also a dice manipulation game when you drop into combat.

I know I’m going to be diving into this one soon. So I’m excited to get it to the table. I ordered the character backstory pack for it with the special quests that you can get from it for each character. I think that is going to make the whole thing even more immersive, which is great.

4: Nemesis

Another horror game, Nemesis is, from what I’ve heard, the closest you can get to Alien the board game. There is an alien infestation on your ship, and you need to complete your objective and then take out all the aliens or launch yourself out in an escape pod. But you don’t want the aliens to get to Earth, that’s for sure. But you want to end up there, so can you get the engines to launch you there.

3: Dwellings of Eldervale

Another non-campaign game, in fact a number aren’t in the top, but they are big games. Dwellings of Eldervale is that. This one really interested me because it has giant monsters, but also you are doing worker placement. But I really like how the worker placement works. You unlock new workers but also your workers become your dwellings. And when you pull back workers they do things as well, so it’s not a waste of a turn to pull back workers.

2: Terraforming Mars

Super high on the list and a big game in how long it takes and how big it plays, Terraforming Mars is so high because I really like Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition. I know that the games are different, there is more take that or randomness, and area control and you have a much bigger board that you’re using in Terraforming Mars. But I really want to play it and see how I like the engine building that goes on in that game.

1: Destinies

Finally, we have Destinies. Destinies is a game from Lucky Duck Games where you are playing through a story, but unlike a lot of story games, this is competitive. And each of you is trying to complete a destiny of yours. And it is a race to see who can complete theirs first. What interests me are some of the mechanics a roll over a certain number to get successes is cool. Plus you can manipulate that. But also that you need to pay attention to the story on other people’s turns because they might find something to help you.

To me, that’s a good game in that it’ll keep you engaged with what everyone is doing. Even if I’m not taking my turn, I need to know what you are doing as well. I might not be actively interacting with anything, but I still need to pay attention. And if a game can do that, I really want to play it.

Final Thoughts

That’s the whole list, all 124 of them. I could have had one less if I counted my playtesting of Roll Player Adventures. But also, that is a game that’s extremely high on my list for wanting to get played. Definitely a lot more big games up here. Though, I think outside of the campaign games, most of them can get played. And I could see, if things fall right, even getting one or two of those to the table this year. Like I said, I think Roll Player Adventures will be getting played soon.

Which one would you play first?

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The Game

So, like I said, I unboxed Descent: Journeys in the Dark from Fantasy Flight Games. This game has a massive box for a massive amount of terrain and minis, though less minis than you might think. This is going to be a story game which has you on a tactical map, going through scenarios and locations, fighting monsters, learning their weaknesses and progressing the story.

What drew me to this game was that it was a new jumping off point for Descent. If you want to read my initial write-up on the game, you can see what they were talking about with the announcement here. But there were a number of things that interested me. The 3D terrain was cool, but a new app was really interesting. I liked the engine that they’d built the previous Mansions of Madness, Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth, Descent 2nd Edition, and Star Wars: Imperial Assault on. But it could have been polished, so I’m hoping that this app will have more polish to it. I haven’t played with it yet.

Board Game Value

But talking about Descent: Journeys in the Dark, led into the topic of value in board games. And I talked about this in a few ways, but one of the biggest is will a board game retain value. For example, I have a lot of campaign games. Will I play those games multiple times, I doubt it for a lot of them but maybe. I think with Gloomhaven I might play it again, but who knows. Others, I know I won’t like Sword & Sorcery. The question is can I sell it for what I paid for it?

But more than that, what games offer good value in what you are getting with them? Something like Descent: Journeys in the Dark, are you getting the “stuff” value that you might get form a Kickstarter like Arydia: The Paths We Dare Tread or Chronicles of Drunagor? And what makes the value of those two better than, say, a cheaper game like Earthborne Rangers?

But also how much do you think about the value of what you are getting? Is that something you factor into a game that you buy or a crowdfunding that you back?

The Drink

So I had another Old Fashioned, not that different than normal. However, this one was made with Japanese whiskey. Also something that’s not that odd, but I talked a little bit about how Suntory Whiskey and in particular their Toki whiskey is a fairly common one in Japan. From people who have visited Japan it seems like it’s the common one used for mixed drink.

Upcoming Streams:

8/12 – Aeon’s End Legacy Game 5 8 PM Central

8/18 – Aeon’s End Legacy Game 6 8 PM Central

8/23 – A Top 10 List 8:30 PM Central

I was thinking for the Top 10 list that I might do the Top 10 games that I’m likely wrong about. These are games that either I love though they have flaws or games that I don’t like but a lot of other people do like them. What is it about them that I like better or that maybe I should like better in the games. Let me know if you think that topic sounds interesting.

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Descent: Legends of the Dark

So, Tom Vasel of the Dice Tower for a few years now has been predicting that we’ll get a Descent 3rd Edition. Well, he was almost right, but Descent: Legends of the Dark isn’t truly a third edition. This is more like a Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle Earth or Star Wars: Imperial Assault sort of game. By that I mean it has a nice campaign element to it and uses an app to help facilitate the game.

One thing that kept me for a long time from getting Descent 2nd Edition was that it was one versus all. Now, I’ve come to like that a bit more that I thought I would, at least in Not Alone, but it feels harder to get to the table. It’s all cooperative and app assisted now. And that intrigues me because it’ll be easier to get to the table.

Plus, the app isn’t the same one that they’ve used for Imperial Assault, Descent, Mansions of Madness, and Journeys in Middle Earth. This is a brand new app. With games like Chronicles of Crime, Forgotten Waters, and Detective using apps, Fantasy Flight needed to up their game. This seems to do that.

This, however is a massive and expensive game. I hope that it’s awesome as it looks cool and game play looked fun. But it’ll be played when it comes out just to mess around with the app for sure.

Similo

This is the one that I was least sure about ordering until I have been watching it played a lot. Horrible Guild over on their YouTube channel plays it fairly often. It’s a pretty straightforward game. There is one person who is it and that person has one of ten people or creatures that they are trying to get the other players to guess. They put down a clue that is either similar or different. First round, player eliminate one, next round two. And that goes up through round four which leaves two left. Then with one final clue players need to try and guess which one it is.

Similo looks like a good and simple party game. And it’s another cooperative party game. Yes, one player is playing a different game, kind of, as the clue giver, the game play looks really fast. And you can get some fun combos. Putting down wild animals and trying to get people to eliminate the right ones by giving clues with myths will be tricky.

Railroad Ink Challenge (Yellow Box)

So I just picked up the green box of Railroad Ink, and this will give me all the small boxes. I am excited to get in more Railroad Ink, in fact, that might be what I stream on Wednesday. The base game of Railroad Ink is fun, but I might prefer challenge. Mainly because challenge offers more challenges. While the original is more route connecting, this one keeps that but also gives you goals to work towards.

I don’t need to say that much more on this you can see some other thoughts all around the site. Here is the Railroad Ink Challenge app article. And here is my Beyond the Box Cover review of the base game. Plus my Back or Brick article, now I wish I had backed. Needless to say, I really like this game a lot and I know it’s one I’ll play often.

So that’s all the games, good thing I made some room with the games I’m getting rid of. But let’s see what game you want to play from all of those?

For me, I think I want to play Descent: Legends of the Dark the most, but all of them seem fun. And Similo might get played first at a game night.

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There are a number of things really that got me interested, the IP is interesting in that Fantasy Flight is making a non-Marvel/Star Wars/Game of Thrones/Lord of the Rings game, and making one that is based off of their own properties that isn’t Arkham Horror. That is fairly rare for them, so to have them go back into the world of Terrinoth, super fantasy name activate, was a lot of fun and interesting to see that they are keeping up some of their own lines. The app integration was also interesting as well as the game play and the cooperative nature. In Descent 2nd Edition, that game was a one versus all game. One person played as the “overlord” who ran all of the bad guys in the scenarios against the players. This is fully cooperative because of the app, and while Descent 2nd Edition had an app that gave it a cooperative campaign, that was not how it had been built to play.

So why am I talking about this now, well, because of these two things.

Fantasy Flight had a big kind of trailer kickoff and announcement for the game. So there is now a whole lot more known about the game, in fact, there is a ton more known about the game. If you are interested in knowing a whole lot more, watch the second video, if you want to read my recap and have a trailer, watch the first video and then read my recap, it won’t cover everything, but I am going to talk about some highlights.

First off, highlight wise, this is an app assisted game along the lines of Mansions of Madness or Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle Earth. Fantasy Flight has been doing app assisted games for quite a while, and for some people that has been a turnoff, they want to get away from technology while playing board games, which I can understand, but I don’t mind an app assist when playing a game, as long as I’m not doing everything on the app, and I don’t feel like I have been with Journeys in Middle Earth or Mansions of Madness. But there’s even more with this app, and I’m going to get into some details, but first, I do want to say that this app was built from the ground up for this game, in previous games they have leveraged their old app design and framework in order to make it faster to market, and that has some limits built in, such as it being really hard to have an undo button if you clicked the wrong thing, this has an undo button. This is also important because that means that this is going to have a different feel and probably a more modern feel to the app.

But let’s talk about features in the game, because that’s what people are going to care about more, than me nerding out over an undo button or the fact that they have built a new framework. There are a lot of cool things they talked about with the app, and I’m just going to highlight a few of them, the first because of how the app is built and because it’s their own IP, they are able to have really big branching storyline changes in it. They’ve done that to some extent in something like Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle Earth, but obviously you source material to that requires the world be left in a certain state, in this, it’s their world, they can do a lot. Next were two things about the bad guys in the game. That was tactics and weaknesses. Weaknesses are what they sound like, something that a bad guy is weak to, a bandit might be weak to slashing damage, but as players, you get to find that out in the game. As you try different weapons, it might tell you something like “You swing with your sword, and it did more damage than you thought it would as it slashes through the bandit.” Now you know swords are good, so next time you see a bandit you’d want to remember to use a sword, and the game keeps track of that you know it for you, so you don’t have to remember because forgetting and discovering the game thing over again wouldn’t be as fun. With tactics, certain bad guys are going to be apt to do certain things that are foreshadowed. For example, again, at the end of a round a bandit might be eyeing a chest, that the game narrates, you don’t know what is going to happen the first time, but after you see them grab a chest from the map and run away, you’ll know that you will want to stop a bandit from doing that again, basically, you have a round to kill them. Another thing that the app helps handle is downtime. Now with this I don’t mean downtime in the set-up or between turns, I’m talking about between missions, what your heroes are doing. A character might decide to do a side quest and they can pick between two, one might give you valor and one might give you honor. You have to decide which one to do, and the game will remember and make decisions about how people react based off of what you’ve done before. And there are more examples of the game remembering or knowing who you are, one person might get a different reaction and conversation based off of their character type and who they are than someone else would. Or the game might know that you are a big fan of using your war hammer in combat or opening chests, and it can tailor challenges and rewards to your style of play.

That’s a lot on the app, so let’s talk about some other things, like the heroes, the bad guys, and the terrain (some might still tie back tot he app).

Let’s actually start with the terrain and the components. The minis themselves are a harder plastic than Fantasy Flight has used before, though the ones in the video are resin, the reason for that is that they are still very strong, but because it’s harder plastic, they are able to get more detail in, and the detail on the minis looks really good in the resin prints. Resin is going to be closer to a hard plastic in the detail that you can get. But enough weird nerding out about that, because the terrain is awesome as well. The terrain is not only just flat map tiles and maybe some tokens to represent objects, it is cardboard 3D terrain where you build up your maps and put items on them. So a map could have multiple levels and some abilities might move bad guys, so you can maybe push them off the edges of things, which seems important. But not only can you interact with the height, you can interact with the objects, if there are trees, you can climb a tree, a well, you can hid inside it, that sort of thing. And how one character can interact with a thing might be different than another character. The reason I added in the app caveat is that this would be really hard to do without the app, so the app keeps track of who is doing that action.

Next we have the monsters, I don’t have a ton to say about them, except that there are 11 different types of monsters. But really, there are more than that, there are 11 different types of monster minis. Because they introduce a concept of factions. If a group of bandits are off by themselves, they are just bandits. If they are working with the Uthuk, the evil magic users or those corrupted by evil, they would be Uthuk bandits and behave differently.

But finally, let’s talk about characters, because really, a game like this is all about playing the heroes and how you play them. Descent: Legends of the Dark, has both cards and dice used in the game, so it’s kind of a hybrid between a few different games, but dice chucking is mainly going to be where it is at for combat and for taking actions. But you’ll use the cards, and their fatigue in an interesting way. A lot of things causes fatigue which is bad, in Descent 1st Edition, there were just turns of resting and doing nothing because you were fatigued in order to be able to do something again. In this, they’ve changed that up. You place fatigue on your character or your card, if that card hits it’s limit, you have a choice, you could leave it there, or you can flip it. Flip it gives you a different ability and you can use that one and start to put fatigue on that side since the fatigue clears off on a flip. It creates an interesting puzzle of a character. They have also made it so that you change up your character very easily. You have your unlocked skills and you have an XP budget, you can try whatever build you want with that XP budget, so a card might be 2 XP and another 1 XP and you have 3 XP so you take those two into battle with you, then the next one you decide to try three 1 XP cards, you can do that. Thematically, does it make sense, probably not, but game wise, it makes it a lot of fun, because you aren’t stuck playing a build you don’t like, in fact, if a character just isn’t your style period, you can swap in a new one, overall, an awesome idea to make sure the game is fun.

Now, in that hour and forty minute video, there is a whole lot more that they talk about, and they show off minis and things like that. If you want to know more, check it out, though, I cover some of the bigger highlights for me of things that are really interesting. But let’s also talk about the price tag here, before we wrap up, this is a $175 game, that is expensive. Now what you get is a lot, they were asked about game play and said probably 50 hours if not more in the base box. But compared to some other games, though with less minis, Gloomhaven you can find around $100 now and I probably have 200 hours into base Gloomhaven. So does that mean that this is too expensive, I’d say no. Gloomhaven doesn’t have an app built specifically for it, this does, and it is a brand new app, there was a ton of story work put into this game, and if you play through the whole game, that’s probably way more time than most people would put into a single game that costs $60. Plus there is the experience factor as well, I realize that the price will turn some people away because they just can’t afford it, and that’s a shame, if you have a group, make it a group buy if you can, but I get that it is a hefty price tag and why it is. It is still one that I’ll want to pick up, just for the cool factor if nothing else.

So, what do you think of Descent: Legends of the Dark? Does the game sound interesting to you? Does the price tag or app worry you?

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Let’s get to the list:

10 – Sword & Sorcery
This is a big dice chucking ameritrash campaign game where you take your group of heroes of old who have been brought back in the nations time of need. You get to level up, get new skills and attacks and generally be pretty awesome as you chuck dice and go through a pretty simple story. The game really gives you a lot of dice to chuck and a lot of cool abilities to use. Just in the base game there are plenty of characters to checkout and you can get a whole lot more in small character expansions or in the bigger box story expansions. This is probably one of the most classic in terms of story that you’ll find for a campaign. It is a bit fiddly, but the upkeep and monster actions are fairly simple and the story is small enough that you don’t feel like you’re spending all your time adjusting the board and looking up story elements in the book, but the initial set-up can be pretty slow.

9 – Risk Legacy
Probably the campaign that has the least amount of story in it. However, the board changes in a legacy style as you play and you can unlock things as new things happen in the game to create even more weird challenges. The story of this game really comes from the players as you face off against each other over and over again for points in this Risk based game that allows you to win not from taking over but by getting victory points for taking out your enemies bases and completing missions. Each game goes pretty fast, which is enjoyable, and you feel like you’ve gotten that Risk dice chucking combat done, but without it overstaying it’s welcome. Plus, unless an odd situation happens, you’re always going to be able to hope back into the game and possibly mess someone up and get back into contention, versus being eliminated. Not a ton of depth to this campaign, but a fun time.

8 – Star Wars: Imperial Assault
The Star Wars dungeon crawl, Imperial Assault offers you two ways to play. First, you can do it with someone running the empire and working within the game to create scenarios and a story that you play through. Or you can be completely cooperative and play through the game using an app that helps you with your book keeping as to everything the empire needs to do. This was the precursor to Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle Earth in what it was doing with the app. The story is fun, and what I really like about this story is that it’s adjacent to the original trilogy story, at least out of the core box. So you don’t play as Luke, Leia, or Han, and you can’t kill of Darth Vader or the Emperor, but they might show up in your story as someone to help you or someone to run away from. It’s fun to see how they can weave that together and create a fun experience of a campaign.

7 – Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle
Another not that story driven one, Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle, has you play through a campaign of the books, getting new threats that you’re raising to finish and new bad guys you’re trying to beat. This is a deck building game that builds on itself as you play more and more games of it, there are seven total games to play out of the base box, one for each book, and you gain new abilities and new cards to build you deck in each one. It starts out simple, but eventually has you focusing more into what you can do really well. You get to play the main characters the base box has Neville, Ron, Hermione, and Harry, and take them through their times at Hogwarts. A downside is that while the game is simple, the longer you go, the more bad guys you have to beat.

6 – Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game
One that I just got into recently but this game has so many things that I love. First, there is a digital component, not that that makes the game so amazing, but because it makes it more immersive as you’re trying to “solve” the case put in front of you. Then with that, you’re also using your own deduction skills, I really like using deduction and puzzling through things, even if I’m not great at figuring out the puzzle all the time, right away. There is so much going on in this game, story wise, that you feel like you’re in it trying to actually solve this case. It reminds me a bit of procedural crime TV shows, but you get to be the main characters. And while I’m not a huge fan of those shows, being a character in that show is fascinating. And while we were investigating, we were getting cards and things to be added into future cases because of what we’d studied before so out of the base box, with five cases, you develop a whole story as these cases tie together.

5 – Arkham Horror: The Card Game
Arkham Horror is an interesting one to put on the list, because as a Living Card game it’s getting new campaigns and parts to old campaigns pretty often. Out of the base box, you have a three part story where you do the first scenario and what you do in that causes changes for future scenarios. There is a lot that I love out of this game, first you get to play through a surprisingly immersive story for something that is done just with cards. You have interesting and different characters as well in the story. And even with just cards, they do wildly different things at times. Add in that you can do some deck building in this game, not during the game but before or between, you can develop the strategy that you want to take into a case, it might be a strategy of more fighting or more investigating, or blending and balancing the two depending on your style, and unlike some of these campaigns where eventually you’ll have played through it, this one is still getting new content all the time.

4 – TIME Stories
This one has less of a through story than a lot of the campaign games, but there are certain elements that tie it together. You are always worried about another time agency that is trying to mess with time and multiverse in it, and thus far, I’ve really enjoyed every scenario. I feel like they’ve managed to change them up a bit, and while you often have combat or things that are just rolling dice and hoping to get lucky, it does work very well. Each scenario has very strong story elements to it as well as you are trying to figure out a puzzle and an optimal path through the game to win, but with that, you’re exploring and uncovering elements of the story as well. I really like the fact that you are put into “vessels” and that’s how you time travel in the game, and sometimes, you don’t do well enough and your “vessel” dies, but jumping back into the past, you can join the game again and do another run to try and solve the puzzle. It can get a bit repetitive for some, but I haven’t found that to be an issue.

3 – Pandemic Legacy Season 1
Second Legacy game on the list, and I will toss in Season 2 as kind of continuation of this if you want more content. Pandemic is a great cooperative game where you are trying to cure diseases. Pandemic Legacy offers much of the same with that, but story and a changing and expanding rule set as time goes on. The game never feels too complex, but it is more challenging than the regular game. I really like how they manage losing in the game, you continue on if you lost twice in a month, and help you balance that out by getting more useful cards back in your deck that allow you to bend the rules. And the story, while not complex is good, and it has a nice twist to it. I don’t think that the twist was all that surprising, but definitely changes up the game.

2 – Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon
This game just screams epic campaign game. You get to level up and improve your character and you get to explore a massive story as you travel through the lands of Avalon. There are some things I really enjoy about the game, first is the story element. You get to delve into so much of a massive exploration journal and find out so much about the world. This is a dark world as well, and I really appreciate that the storytelling is set in that and that there is a survival element to the game as well. This can be a punishing game that makes you travel around places and do the same things multiple times, but that’s kind of the point of the game as you are traveling through this grim dark Avalon facing off against monstes, trying to hold the Wyrdness at bay by keeping Menhir lit, and struggling to find food. It’s played out over several chapters and you definitely don’t see everything in the game, so it’s a campaign you can come back to again and explore more to see if you can do better.

1 – Gloomhaven
My #1 game of all time, no surprise it’s at the top of the list. Gloomhaven just is a wonderfully massive game. It tells a good story, I wouldn’t say as good as Tainted Grail, but beyond that, the mechanics are amazing, I love the card combat and movement that you have in each scenario as you try and puzzle out what is going to be the best and what the enemies might do. And there’s just so much content in the game, not just scenarios, but also monsters to fight and characters to play as. I love that you have to retire characters at certain points, and that then gives you a new character that feels different from other characters, there’s just so much interesting things going on in the game and there are apps to help make it faster to get to the table that are great. I’ve talked about this a lot, so I’ll stop there, but it’s amazing.

One thing I’ll point out about this list, with the exception of Risk Legacy, all the games on the list are cooperative. It’s fairly rare for there to be competitive campaign games, that I’ve seen, though there are some out there with the likes of Charterstone, which is fun, and Seafall, which is long. But most are going to lean cooperative, so think about that, if you don’t love cooperative games and you want to play a campaign game. And I have a lot more to play and coming than I’ve already played. I really want to get the likes of Betrayal Legacy, Clank Legacy! and Aeon’s End Legacy to the table as well sooner rather than later, because all of those are campaigns based off of games that I already love. Also, I left Dungeons and Dragons off the list, because, I want to keep it board games versus adding in RPG’s which are great but different experiences.

What are some of your favorite campaign games? What are some that I should checkout?

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10 – Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle
Do you want to play through the Harry Potter books? That’s what Hogwarts Battle gives you as you can play from Ron, Hermoine, Neville, or Harry himself as you go up against he-who-shall-not-be-named. Though, you need to deal with the likes of Crabbe and Goyle, Quirrel, and others first. To do that, you need to build up your deck so that you can deal with the threats before the plans of the villains get too tough to deal with and you lose the game. The game grows in complexity as you advance through the various books until you get your NEWT’s and you can specialize your skills even more. And there are more challenges that you need to tackle. There’s even an expansion to add in some of the monsters that live in the forest and Luna as a playable character as well.

9 – Betrayal at Baldur’s Gate
D&D Theme here which is kind of odd to have a game that’s based on an RPG and Video Game. But there’s a game that is actually based on Betrayal at House in the Hill. In this game you’re going to explore the city of Baldur’s Gate and there are odd things going on, crazy events, and omens, and items. Eventually someone is a traitor and everyone is going to have to deal with their betrayal. You get that classic D&D sort of feel as you have all your different character classes that you can play and all of them do something special that makes sense for their class. The cleric heals, the wizard has magic missiles, and it’s a very fun time. While it is a big generic in terms of what people expect from fantasy now, the game is a lot of fun and more balanced than Betrayal at House on the Hill.

8 – Lord of the Rings
There are a number of Lord of the Rings games, this isn’t the Living Card Game or Journeys in Middle Earth, this is the game that came out in 2000. This one is all about playing cards in a such a way that you can complete legs of Sam and Frodo’s journey to Mount Doom to destroy the ring. It allows you to go on that journey and play as Pippin, Merry, or Fatty Bolger if you’re playing with five players. It’s fairly abstracted but overall a bunch of fun and punishingly hard as you reach towards the end of the game. The artwork in the game is beautiful and fully cooperative, though, there is a Sauron expansion where someone can control Sauron.

7 – Hats
Not all games with an IP are going to have a ton of theme to them. Hats is definitely one of them as you’re trying to create you best collection of hats. Now, that’s all around the Madd Hatter’s tea party and his hat collection and which hats you should be wearing, but it’s really a card based game where you are collecting hats and trying to set yourself up to score the best that you can. It’s a fun abstract game with a vague Alice in Wonderland aesthetic to it, but that’s about it. It’s a fun fast game that has some clever things around it when you consider which hats you’re trying to collect and which you’re playing down that might help your opponent. Definitely a stretch for an IP, but technically it has one.

6 – The Grimm Masquerade
There are a few of these that are using public domain IP’s. The fairy tale characters that you get in this hidden role game are all out there for anyone to use, but they are a theme that has been added to the game from a previous work. In Grimm Masquerade, you are at a masquerade, unsurprisingly, and you are trying to figure out who all the other players are. You do that by giving them gifts and taking a gift for yourself. If you’re Cinderella you want to get a glass slipper, but there is one that is going to be bad for you and if you get that, it outs who you are as a character and you’re out for the round. But you don’t have to just give gifts, you can accuse as well. And if you correctly guess who someone is, you get more points. There’s an interesting amount of strategy to this generally lighter style of game.

5 – Star Wars: Rebellion
Star Wars in a box, this game is all about playing that original trilogy and seeing of the Empire is able to find and destroy the rebel base or if the rebels are able to sabotage the empire’s plans and outlast them. You get to play with iconic characters and write your version of the trilogy. Maybe it’ll be Yavin that gets blown up or Endor. Will the rebels capture Darth Vader, or maybe the Emperor himself will be leading the Death Star into battle. It’s a big game of cat and mouse that takes a while, but it feels like a Star Wars movie each time you play it.

4 – The Dresden Files Cooperative Card Game
Probably one of the more abstracted games on the list, the theme still comes through well, especially if you’re familiar with the books. You are taking your team of investigators, combatants, and possibly werewolves to try and solve the case from a given Dresden Files book. Each book has it’s own balance of advantages you can get, obstacles you can overcome, and most importantly cases to solve and villains to beat. If you can solve more cases than there are villains left, you win, but you might be dealing with the final encounter where you can use some abilities, but hope that you got things close enough so that with a lucky roll you can defeat that last villain you need to defeat or solve the last case at the last minute.

3 – Arkham Horror: The Card Game
One of two Lovecraft games on the list, and since you haven’t seen the other one, you know that it is going to be higher. This game allows you to play through scenarios, trying to avoid going insane and be able to solve the mystery presented before you with basically just cards and a few tokens. It has some good mechanics some of the randomness and mechanics, and I really like that you can tailor your experience where if you want to enjoy the story more, you can play on easy, if you want it hard, you can play at an extremely difficult level. It works well, with that, for like I said if you just want to experience the story or for learning the game, being able to play on an easier level.

2 – Mansions of Madness 2nd Edition
The second game on the list based around Lovecraftian mythos and they come back to back. Mansions of Madness just does a better job with it’s app integration for doing the book keeping of moving the story along nicely. In both of the cases, you can play very different types of stories, but they are all set in the Lovecraft mythos, or at least adjacent to it. Lovecraft’s works were less pulp detective than the Fantasy Flight Lovecraftian games are, but it still has some of the theme of the monsters, and a game that is just about madness and dread wouldn’t work extremely well, you need something for the players to do.

1 – Marvel Champions: The Card Game
Top spot goes to Marvel, this game a lot of fun, and it really uses it’s IP well. You have your superhero, Spider-Man for example, fighting Rhino. Well, if Rhino has been hitting Spider-Man too much, he can always flip over into Peter Parker, and Rhino will stop attacking and go back to scheming on his great plan to rob a bank. So it really feels very thematic and you come in with a web swing and kick Rhino to eventually beat him, it feels like you’re playing as Spider-Man. The art helps the theme as well, and even the graphic design on things like the “Tough” and “Stunned” cards have a great comic book look and feel to them.

There are a lot of fun games with good IP’s on them that don’t have to be a generic fantasy or sci-fi setting. A lot of these games, while some are a bit more complicated are going to be good things to get people who maybe aren’t big game players who really love a theme. I think that all of these are fun games, and I really wish, looking at the list, that I had some time to play some of them right now, but thankfully some of them, Marvel Champions, Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle can be played solo, or with Lord of the Rings, my wife enjoys that game as well. There are a lot of good games with IP’s now after it just being generic roll and move games.

What are some of your favorite games with an IP?

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Just looking back at 2019, I streamed more than 20 times and I got 40+ books read. The watch 5 anime to end of their seasons or wherever they are, pretty sure I got to that one, but I didn’t get games I bought in 2019 all of them played. I think I have a few for streaming that I haven’t gotten to yet.

So let me make a new set of resolutions:

1. Always be reading a book. What do I mean by that, I mean that I want to always have a book that I’m actively working on. If you don’t read for a week, that’s fine, but if it goes longer than that, I want to be reading more.
2. To go with the first one, I want to get a big dent into the books that I own but haven’t read yet. Some of them are going to be fast to read, others are long, but I want to get through a number of them.
3. Stream a game the whole way through. Not sure what it is going to be, but Folklore: The Affliction is high on the list, and so is something like Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle Earth or some of the games that I have coming in.
4. Don’t miss a week of #10MinMarvel. This will be tricky to end the year, but I’m hoping not to miss a week, because I want to make it a successful podcast. So to do that, I need to be consistent in what I do, plus if I miss one week, I’ll make an excuse as to why I can miss future ones. And, I suspect there will be a lot of fun Marvel news this upcoming year.
5. Finish the chronological Marvel watch through. We made it through a number of them and are up to Winter Soldier, but for #10MinMarvel, I want to get the rest of the way through them. Ideally before Black Widow, but we’ll see if that happens.

Then let’s talk about the Nerdologists website. We got moved over to a new hosting site last year and it has made a big difference in speed. I don’t know that we’ll see any massive changes on the site, though I might start looking at updating the design later in the year.

And let me look at some stats. I just want to say thank you to everyone who went through some of the hiccups that we had with the system earlier in the year and show off how the numbers are compared to last year through the same time period.

So last year we had 40950 users with a whopping 415% increase from the previous year where we had just under 8000. But more than that, we had 151,942 page views as compared to 27,751, over a 440% increase. The amount of time people spent on the site increased and the bounce rate, people leaving the site fast, decreased.

Malts and Meeples Youtube/Twitch Channels were started for solo gaming content. Only 3 subscribers so far, but I got up 33 videos and some of them have better than I expect view numbers. Still not many people joining live, but that’s one thing I want to get better at, having a consistent streaming time for people to join me.

10 Minute Marvel was also started. I’ve gotten a couple of ratings and reviews, and in the time it’s been up 278 listens. The listens are also slowly increasing which is what I was looking for. If you haven’t checked it out, please do so, and let me know any feedback you might have.

So what do I want to do new now in 2020?

A few of my resolutions are also for the site, keeping up streaming and podcast are the big two.

I hope that in 2020 I can do some new things as well in terms of content. Not sure what it might be, maybe interviews, maybe patreon, whatever it might be, it’s going to probably be a surprise for me as well as you. But If we can continue to see growth into 2020, that’s awesome. I doubt that we’ll see 400% increases, but I’m hoping that it’ll continue to increase.

But, let me wrap this up just by saying THANK YOU to everyone who checks out the site, I’m so glad that you do. Hopefully some of the new content, the streams and podcast interest you, and I look forward to writing a lot more content that hopefully you’ll continue to enjoy. If you have any suggestions for the site, please contact me one of the ways below, and I’ll consider it and dialog with you about it.

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When I created this list, I determined that about 116 is where on my list of games (192) that I wouldn’t be always up for playing them. At 180, I hit the point where I probably wouldn’t play them again. So there are some games I enjoy that didn’t make the list, Castle Panic, Love Letter, and Forbidden Desert are probably some of the biggest names. If you’re wondering what the bottom of the list is, I’m not telling. Let’s just say it was a bad experience playing it because of some of the people and tactics to get me to try it, and the game wasn’t exciting. Also, be aware that there are some GenCon demos on the list, I feel like I got a good feeling for them, so I can rank them where they fit for me, this is also a living list so things are likely to change when I do this next year or even a few weeks from now. Finally, if there is an Amazon link for it or CoolStuffInc, I’ll share it.

100 – Lazer Ryders
Lazer Ryders is a silly game with an amazing look. The best way to describe this is that you are on light bikes and trying to get through certain spots before other people. But the game is highly reflective and silly. In this game, like I said, you are trying to get through spots, and you are creating a track as you go. But you can’t plan out your moves, once you have a piece in your hand and it’s over the table, you’re playing it. And if you crash, you start from the edge, and when you start at the edge of the table, you do so with your eyes closed. The look for this game is the best part, there are four players and the player pieces look like they are in a VHS case. It’s very 80’s-tastic, and just a fast and fun game that’s good for a laugh.

99 – Skull
I enjoyed this game as a bluffing game where you are trying to push your luck. In this game everyone is playing down coasters, face down, that have either a skull or a rose on them. Then eventually someone is going to bid as to how many of these coasters they can flip over and people take turns bidding higher until only one person is left. Then they have to flip that many coasters. But the trick is you have to flip all of yours, so are you bluffing in hopes that someone thinks that yours are safe to flip so they bust. It’s a small game, it’s a simple game, but it’s interesting and it’s very portable.

98 – Marrying Mr. Darcy
This is a game that my wife kickstarted, not me for once, huzzah! But it’s a very fun little game, especially if you enjoy Pride and Prejudice, and I like it’s snarky feel. The game keeps some snark as you build up your Bennett sister or other characters so that they are able to get their ideal suitor. It’s a very simple game and you really just flip a card and play that card. But that’s not a bad thing, my only downside to the game is that there are a few too many cards that you flip, if that was reduced by 25%, it would be great. Still, it’s not too long, so it’s a fun time and everyone always enjoys the sarcastic and goofy nature of the game.

97 – Takenoko
Sometimes you just want to eat bamboo. In Takenoko, you control bamboo growing, panda eating bamboo, and gardener growing bamboo in order to please the emperor. This game for being very cute is actually somewhat complex as you take different actions to complete objectives that you’ve drawn. It’s really a game that’s about completing sets of bamboo or growing bamboo in a certain way. The game has a nice chibi panda in it, and the bamboo pieces are cool because you set them up. It’s also a game that Kristen has enjoyed so that makes it fun to play as well, even though we don’t own the game. I don’t know that I would say it’s an introductory game, which I feel like it should be though, as there is a bunch going on.

96 – Qwirkle
Some games are good because you can play with with basically anyone. Qwirkle is one of those games, I can play it with my parents, and I can play it with siblings, and I can play it with my wife, so all different levels of gamers. It’s a good puzzle sort of game that is all about pattern recognition, but because of the luck of the draw of tiles, those who are good at pattern recognition won’t always win. In this game you are playing down tiles that have various colors and shapes on them. You score points for adding to rows of colors as long as the shape is unique or shapes as long as the color is unique. It has a bit of a scrabble feel without being a word game.

95 – Telestrations
This is a game similar in appeal to the one above, while that is more of a strategy game to be played with anyone, Telestrations is a party game for anyone. It also goes by the name Telephone-Pictionary if you are playing it without the actual game. In this game, each player has a pad, everyone rights down a phrase, word, whatever, then they pass it, the next person draws, pass it again, next person writes, and so on. Then you flip through it and laugh at how it’s changed over time. And fairly often it’s completely different. This is really more of an activity, like The Mind, because no one keeps score, but it’s a fun activity that anyone can join in.

94 – The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-earth
When I was saying that there were some games that I expected to move on the list, Journeys in Middle-earth is one of them. I think as I play more and get more into the story this will go up on my list. What I like about it is that it has an app that helps and you get a story because of the app. What I don’t love about it is that you have an app and the app does almost too much so you almost feel like you could play it as a computer game with just a slight tweak tot he game. It looks cool on the table, and if you wanted to take characters from the Lord of the Rings, plus a few new characters on an adventure, you can do that, though, I wish it was only new characters.

93 – Dragonfire
Every time I’ve played this game I’ve lost. But I still like it, this is based off of the Shadowrun: Crossfire system but instead of being cyberpunk, this is D&D. You get your character and class and start fighting off waves and waves of monsters, buying new cards and building up your deck. I actually grabbed this used not too long ago, so I’m excited to stream it solo, because, though it doesn’t have a true solo mode, it’s cooperative, that means I’ll be able to play through the stories that it has. I like deck building as a mechanic, and I like the scenario based game and the adventuring feel of it, and I really like D&D, so it’s a good fit for me.

92 – Charterstone
The first legacy game on the list, and no, Seafall won’t be making the list. Charterstone is really a worker placement game where you get to build the board as you go, and then in the end, you can play a worker placement game. For me, this is a good and simple game that you can play quickly, thankfully, because I don’t feel like there are massive things going on in the game, and there isn’t story. Now, I know there is technically story, but there really isn’t story that matters, so instead I just enjoy it as a straightforward worker placement game with some fun combo building. I still need to finish it, but three of us had babies in the past year who were playing it, so who knows when it will happen. If it doesn’t, I might just make the board and add in the last few buildings, we’ll see.

91 – Shadowrun: Crossfire
I could just say, see 93, so I will, see 93. That’ll give you an idea of what this game is, but what I like about this game better is that it is cyberpunk. Yes, I love D&D, but sometimes you want to play something different, and you can do that in Shadowrun: Crossfire. In fact, that’s why I kickstarted and got another Shadowrun game, because I like the cyberpunk setting. I don’t always love sci-fi, but cyberpunk style of sci-fi is great. I don’t own this one, and I don’t think that I’ve won this one either when I’ve played, but that’s fine because I never felt like I was just getting crushed by it.

Alright, that’s the first 10 games. Only 90 more to go. I’m guessing that people can probably get my top game, but there are a lot of fun games on this list still to come and probably some surprised with how high or low some games will be in my top 100.

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