Top 5 Board Games of 2022

5. Village Rails

Village Rails is a game that stands out to be because it takes a concept I like in Village Green and iterates upon it. In Village Green, by a different designer, it is a tough puzzle to crack. With Village Rails you are still filling out a grid of cards completing rail routes, but it’s not as restricting. You decide how much you want to optimize how you score points on the route.

And I think the whole concept of route building is a lot of fun. This distills it into something that’s much smaller than a big train game, and offers more interesting decisions than a game like Ticket to Ride. All with just a deck of cards. You score points for the routes and the engines that you place on them, and it’s really just a clever and enjoyable system.

4. The Isle of Cats: Explore and Draw

This is one that is more built upon another game than my first one. But Isle of Cats: Explore and Draw is a roll and write version of Isle of Cats. The game plays in a much faster time and offers interesting other choices that the board game version can’t because of how it’s set-up. I think I like it better than the big box version, but it is close and I need to play the bigger box more.

In this you are still trying to rescue cats from the island. But you activate a column of three cards each round. Those cards can be cats to place on your boat, same rules for that as Isle of Cats. Or you can get scoring cards which you track which ones you’ve activated on a sheet. The game plays much faster, that is for sure, and offers still a lot of good choices. Plus you have powers you can use to break the rules and optimize a turn, which is fun as well.

3. Ready Set Bet

I own this one now, I own all of them on the list, but it took me a while to get Ready Set Bet. Ready Set Bet is a horse betting and horse racing game. There is an app that can call the race for you, but otherwise, someone does and everyone else is tossing down bets as the race goes on hoping to make as much money as they can.

There is a real time aspect that is needed for this game. It gives you that tension that I can only assume is like being at the track. You are watching trying to get a bet in at the last second on a sleeper who is making a move towards the end so you can win big. But if you hold onto your bets too long, the odds of betting on the favorites becomes worse. It’s a clever, light, and exciting system.

2. First Rat

First Rat is a game that I think the Dice Tower crew talked about well, it looks like it shouldn’t be that thinky a game. But First Rat, a game where you are collecting pieces to build a rocket ship as a rat to get to the moon that is made of cheese, it works really well.

You get a lot of options of how to move and optimize your strategy. But each player can have their own strategy. I pushed up on the lights track because I wanted, when I moved up the main track, it to be even more powerful. To collect resources faster. Other players pushed up for resources faster but had to be okay with getting fewer. There are a lot of fun things to play around with on the system. And the theme makes what is basically a resource collection game so much more fun.

1. Stars of Akarios

Finally, you got to see me play this one on Malts and Meeples. We have Stars of Akarios. An epic, massive, space exploration and tactics game. I love this game because it does so much. You want tactical space combat, it does that. You want to explore a planet, you can do that. And it has choose your own adventure story in there as well.

I’ve talked about this game a lot. I thought that I’d like it, and I do, indeed, like this game a lot. The story is engaging. It isn’t as polished or deep as some, like Tainted Grail for example, but it is a fun story. It has that early 2000’s SyFy channel vibe to it, or something like Farscape which is just fun to play in. And the tactical space combat is so cool and puzzly to figure out. And then you get little breaks with the story and exploring planets before you launch off and try again.

What Are Your Favorite Games from 2022?

I had 16 different board games on the list. And I did exclude Marvel Dice Throne from my rankings because it is just more Dice Throne. But that would be my number one otherwise. I love Dice Throne. But it has been a really good year for games. I don’t on my list have Oathsworn because I haven’t played it yet. I want to play Lands of Galzyr. Just missing was Batman: Everybody Lies the Detective System game and Long Shot the Dice Game. So it has been a story year for games. What is your favorite?

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This also comes from DrGloryHoundd talking about the same thing when they, him and GloryHoundd, think about backing Kickstarter games. The question he asks quite often is when backing a game will it replace a like game on their shelf. They have their go to worker placement game(s). If the back another worker placement game, it needs to be better than the previous ones to stay on their shelf. But let’s get to the main question before we dive into some reasoning for adding or not.

How Many Board Games Do You Need Of Each Type?

This isn’t a number that anyone can really say. Now, that’s a cop out answer in some ways, but I think it comes down to the gamer. Lets say that someone only plays party games, they might want to have 20-30 different party games so they can have a big rotation. And that person only needs party games because they only play party games.

I, on the other hand, do not need that many party games. This is for two reasons, firstly, I don’t only play party games. I play all sorts of games and that means that I will buy and want a more diverse game collection. Secondly, since I don’t play only party games, that means that I don’t burn through the content on party games nearly as fast. So I don’t need all the content.

This is really true with how I game in basically any type of game. I don’t need a ton in any particular type because I play most types. That means that unless I really love a game, it’s going to take a longer time for me to fully explore it. But that’s getting beside the point, let’s talk about some of the reasons to or not to get some games.

Why Get More Or Not?

There are a number of reasons to get more in a type of game or not. Let’s start with the one thing to consider that I’ve already really touched on.

Is There A Spot on The Shelf Next To Other Similar Games?

This is the question that DrGloryHogg is always asking. And I think for a lot of types of games, this is something to strongly consider. Especially if you have a big game collection. My game collection is sitting at just over 400 with what I own for base games and expansions. That’s a lot of games, so I need to ask myself, if I get another deck building game will I play it over on Aeon’s End, Xenoshyft: Onslaught, Ascension, or Clank?

But not only if I’ll play it over them, but will it make it into the rotation. Does it do something that sets it apart so even if I keep and play all the others that I’d be playing this new deck building game? Which actually leads into the next question.

Does It Do Anything Different?

So you think that there might be a spot on the shelf for it. Not that it’d bump out a different game, but that it can get added. Why is that? Does the game just fit into that niche that you love so much, or, does it do something different?

I think when consider what game to buy if a game does something different or unique to what you’ve done before, that means that there might be room. If it’s just more the same type of game that you already have, then you have to ask will it replace the old favorites.

But let’s look at deck building again. Lost Ruins of Arnak has deck building in it. I bought it because Lost Ruins of Arnak is a worker placement and deck building game. I mention that I have Ascension, that’s just pure deck building, Clank is deck building and push your luck, Xenoshyft: Onslaught is deck building tower defense, and Aeon’s End is deck building, tower defense, and a boss battler.

Do You Need More Of Your Favorite Type Of Game?

I think one thing to consider is how much you like the type of game. I don’t need that many worker placement games in my collection. There’s a simple reason for that, I don’t pull them off the shelf because I don’t gravitate towards that type of game. I want a game with narrative and more high moments, in my opinion. Now, I don’t hate worker placement euro games, I am just never going to gravitate towards them. So I have a few that I like in my collection and it’d take something special, or the theme of beer, to get added to my collection.

On the flip side, I really love story driven and adventure games. That is why I am debating about Agemonia now. With games like 7th Continent, Midarra, Gloomhaven, Clank Legacy, Betrayal Legacy, Forgotten Waters, and more already in my collection, do I need another game with a lot of story? Add in the fact that I have Oathsworn, Frosthaven, ISS Vanguard, Etherfields, Isofarian Guard, and again even more, do I need another adventure game? This is really where I start considering differences as I mention above.

Can You Get It Later?

This one is fairly different but also an important consideration. Can you get the game later? This is something I talk about fairly often with crowdfunding games. And I won’t dive into all the details on it because, while, there are a lot and that is it’s own article. I talk about most of the points in my article on whether or not to late back a game which you can find here. But even for retail games it does matter.

Why, because over time games generally go down in price. I say generally because when a game gets extremely popular it can be more expensive on the second hand market. Everything for Battlestar Galactica costs $600+. Spire’s End was going for $150 for a $50 game. There are obviously exceptions but for most games you can get them water. So for a retail game, consider if you want/need to play it now. Or can you wait until you’ve played another game of it’s type enough times that you are done with it and then you replace it.

Final Thoughts

Like I said towards the beginning, there is no right number. But I think that it is something to be mindful about when purchasing a game. I keep on going back to how DrGloryHogg talks about it. Will it replace something already on my shelf. Because I might have room for more board games but how many do I have room for?

I think most hobby board gamers would be perfectly fine keeping every game we ever bought. Why, because there is an element of collecting that goes on as well. But we don’t, generally, have that room. And we don’t generally have that money. When I do a point of order/sale article it isn’t always because I’m 100% done with a game, it’s that I want to try something new.

How do you decide if you need to get another board game?

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Now, both have benefits in terms of your game collection. So I’m going to talk about the pros to both, and probably some cons as well, but when it comes to gaming, for me getting more games you can play is never going to be a bad thing.

The Argument for Exapnsions

So the argument for getting an expansion or starting to focus more on getting expansions is that you’ll probably play their content more. For a lot of games, Small World, Pandemic, Sagrada, and others, you’ll often just find yourself always having the expansion in the game. So if you are playing those games often, you’ll get more use out of that content.

It also can increase the replayability of those games. Stuff like Pandemic and Small World are great for introducing new people into board gaming. But it can end up feeling like you are playing the same game over and over again. So getting new roles in Pandemic or getting new monsters and abilities in Small World that can create combos or new strategies to try, those things will freshen up a game for a player who plays those games a lot.

Sometimes you can also not increase the number of boxes for the games by getting expansions. If the expansion can be stored with the base game, or vice-a-versa, you don’t add any new boxes to your collection that take up shelf space. Now, this isn’t always the case so sometimes you’re just adding boxes like normal, but if you are tight on space, that’s one reason to consider an expansion over a new game.

The Argument for New Games

With a new game one of the big selling points is that you can try something new. Sounds obvious, but it might allow you to find a new type of game or a new favorite game by trying out something new. Or you might find an improvement upon a game that you already like, if you like something like Splendor, trying Century Spice Road or Century Golem Edition might give you a game that you like better or that people in your group will like better, even though the feel of the two can be similar.

A new game also allows you to fill in gaps in your gaming collection. Now, everyone will have different types of games that the prefer, but sometimes you might need a party game, and you might need it so that you don’t get stuck playing a party game that you really don’t like. Or maybe a euro or deck building, or whatever it might be. So filling in some of those areas that you might not have enough of for your gaming group and to keep it interesting is important as well.

The Arguments Against Expansions

While I talked about the added variability, one thing to be slightly concerned about with adding more is the addition of complexity to a game. So you might take a game that is relatively easy to get to the table and make it harder by adding in additional rules or roles to explain. So while technically the game has more replayability because of those things, it will see the table less because it’s harder to pull out with a group of new to the game players. I have a friend who has several expansions for Galaxy Trucker, but because it’s harder to teach with those in the box, they raretly get played with.

Also, an expansion might not add in that much more to a game, so kind of the opposite of the one above, but if it just adds in a few more cards or a modular board, or something like that, it might not feel like it changes up the game that much, so it doesn’t add to the game play or it getting back to the table again.

The Argument Against New Games

The most obvious one is that you might not like the game, as simple as that. It’s an unknown commodity to you and there’s a risk/reward to factor in to it. Now, the more you’ve played games and played a variety of games, the odds of finding a complete miss aren’t that high, though it might not be something better than you already have on the shelf.

Speaking of shelves, space is also a concern. Because it is something completely new, it could take up a chunk of space and if you are limited in how much space you have, it might be the case where you won’t have room to store a new game. Now this can be rectified by getting rid of a game, but you might love all the games that you have, so then you have to make a choice if you decide to get any new games.

So, is there a better option, getting expansions or a new game? I don’t really think so. I think expansions can breath new life into an old game if you get them, but if you’re enjoying the base game, there’s no reason to. I think that new games can help you find things that you love and new favorites but probably have a higher chance of being a dud. It depends on how people play their games. Normally, I’m writing this mid Covid-19 Pandemic 2020, I play a lot of new to me games and a lot of different games, so having a good variety is great and something I really enjoy. But if you’re with a group who likes their handful of games, expansions are a great way to keep that feeling fresh.

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So what I wanted to think about, is there a better way to play games or is there a time for both things?

I think that the simple answer is that there is a time for both old favorites and trying new board games.

There, the article is done. But not really, because I think there are traps that we can fall into as board gamers that we should be aware of with old and new games.

With new games, I feel like it’s pretty simple. As they have put it on the Dice Tower and other places, it’s the cult of the new. The idea for that is that whatever is new is clearly a lot better and everything that came before it is bad. Obviously there can be several issues with this. The first being that you buy games faster than you can play them. I think that is inherently an issue, depending on the type of game that you like to play. If you just play euro games, you can probably keep the games on the “shelf of shame” to a minimum, because playing the game once is a separate experience. There are a lot of games now that have a campaign in them, and with that, now you need to play through several games to either get the idea of the story or to complete the game. So you can end up with a big shelf of unplayed games. The cult of the new can also lead to buying games faster than you can play them, not just because of length, but in general, and in that case, you’re never going to get to them all, and I think for some people that’s fine, but for others, it can be an issue. It goes back to hobby versus collection. Finally, the issue with cult of the new is cost. One groups like The Dice Tower and Rolling Solo Facebook groups, people are always talking about new games. So there are so many games that seem interesting out there, and that is spendy.

Now, I talked about that as a negative, but I think sometimes people push back on it too much. This can be one of the issues with the old favorite. There’s nothing wrong with Dominion, a game that I’m not a fan of anymore, but if you are excluding playing other deck builders because you like Dominion so why bother, that’s a bad attitude as well. There are a couple of issues with this mindset. The first being that it’s possible you’ll be alienating yourself from your play group. They are probably going to put up with playing Dominion for a while, but if that’s all you’ll play or if you only have a handful of favorites, they might want to branch out and that will mean branching away from inviting you to game nights. Also, it’s going to keep you from finding other good games. I can, again, understand not wanting to have to learn new games all the time, but doing that to the exclusion of other games is an issue.

Tied into that, but another issue can be treating the game like something more than it is. The idea is that because something like Dominion was the first big deck builder and now is liked less, you feel better because you still like the original. This comes with not being willing to try new games and keeping you from finding new good games because it might be a deck builder and Dominion is a deck builder so why do you need more. However, there are many deck builders out there that do a whole lot more than Dominion, so the elitist attitude that there is no reason to try more keeps you from being able to branch out into more interesting games. Let me quickly clarify my last sentence, while personally think there are deck builders that provide more interesting choices and themes than Dominion, what I meant there was additional interesting games.

Finally, I think that people often stick with old favorites because of the amount of board games in the market. If you got into Dominion, Catan, or Ticket to Ride when they first came out, the board game market was much smaller. So some people keep from jumping in further, because they don’t know where to jump in. Instead, they just defend the old favorite and only want to play that. That can be because of the number of games or a bad experience with the wrong new game. If someone liked the idea of Legacy games after playing Pandemic Legacy and then played Seafall, they might not want to play another legacy game after that, but don’t let that color all future legacy games. I think, now, we have enough resources to keep the overwhelming number of games or a bad experience to keep you from trying new games. I feel like that is more of an excuse than a reason. With top 10 lists on different types of games from The Dice Tower or The Brothers Murph, and tons of other locations, you can see what games other people like. Also, there is Board Game Geek that has all games listed there, and you can search either by an mechanic that you like, or by a name and you find out information on a game. So yeah, you are still going to find a dud, but between those things, you’re going to be able to find games that are more likely you’ll like. Board Game Geek even has a nice resource now that recommends games if you like one game, so that helps you find more games as well.

Right now, we live in a world where some people hang onto old things too much and other people are too happy to rush forward and never look back. This is a trend in board games as well. For board games, and for my collection, I feel like I need to walk that line, being discerning about adding new things, and being willing to try new things, but at the same, coming back to the old games again from time to time. And again, this depends on whether you want it to be a collection or a hobby. So for that reason, I want to go back to old games, because I want to walk that line, where I have a hobby, but also a large number of board games.

Where do you fall with this on board games? Are you into the new board games? Do you only want to play old favorites? What are some new games that look cool, that you want to try? What are your old favorites?

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But, as cool as all that will be, the biggest part of going to GenCon will be seeing the new board games. Followed up by playing in some RPG’s and board games. And that takes us to what this is article is going to be about. It’s going to be planning events and what I want to do at GenCon.

Like I said, the biggest reason I’m going is to try out new games and probably pick up new games. But that is going to be a little bit looser as to how that works. But that really does come into how you plan going to a convention. I need to give myself enough time at the convention to do those more random things, and I can’t plan out my whole day. Even as I get a better idea as to what games might be there as the time gets closer, for new board games, it is going to be guesswork as to when I might be able to see them, if I am even able to see t hem at all. Again, there are going to be 60 thousand plus people there, so it’ll be a little bit crowded, I’m guessing.

So how do I go about picking the right number of events that I’m going to be doing?

I think that’s something that’s really tricky. The Con is a four day event, but like most Cons, that really means a three day event and Sunday. Sunday, things just slow down, but we’re planning on being there all of Sunday and heading back on Monday. That doesn’t mean that there won’t be games and things to do on Sunday, it just means that the crowd is thinning out a lot and your options are a bunch less.

So, Sunday, GenCon released it’s primary event schedule. The person I’m going with and I have already scheduled some time this evening where we can go over what events we are going to shoot for. But one thing we have to do is determine how many and what events we’re going to what to do.

I’ve gone through some of the list, but there are thousands of options, possibly even thousands of options per day. So how do you narrow that down? First know that you can’t do everything and even know that by the end you probably won’t want to do everything you have signed up for. Having the ability to do those random things, meet new friends and hang out with old friends, those are the strongest point of a convention. Being able to play a pick-up game of the new board game you got with some people is probably going to be more interesting than playing in yet another random D&D Fifth Edition game. And that’s not to say that those events are bad, but just limit your number.

Going through the list, I saved a few to an e-mail that I sent myself just to get an idea of what I was looking for. By a few, I mean over twenty items, and all of those were basically on the calendar before noon on Thursday, so all at the same time. Clearly I’m not going to go to all of those, but they give me a baseline and my friend a baseline of what to talk about when planning tonight. We can see what sort of events and games look interesting to us. We definitely don’t have to do the same thing all the time, but since it’s both our first times there, I’m sure we’ll be doing that more often than not. Also, we don’t know many people who are going, but might be getting a few more friends along.

So what am I looking to do there?

I’m looking at some board games that I’ve heard about in the past year but haven’t been interesting enough for me to pick up. Games like Chronicles of Crime, Too Many Bones, the Hellboy board game, and Village attacks. Beyond that, I looked at different RPG systems, stuff like Kids on Bikes (which I backed on Kickstarter), Sentinel Comics RPG, A Dresden Files game using Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition and one using Fate, Mutants and Masterminds. So I’m really mainly looking for stuff that I haven’t done before. I also put down some games, like Root, which has a new expansion, or Folklore: The Affliction and Arkham Horror 3rd Edition that I own but haven’t played yet. I hope I have by August, but at the same time, it would be a good learning situation.

That’s what I’m really looking for in what I do at conventions that is planned. I want to be able to learn how to play a new game, or see something done that’s new to me, even if the game itself isn’t. If someone were to want me to play a Mansion of Madness intro scenario again, I’ve done that three times, I’d pass. But if was an expansion of Mansions of Madness that I don’t have, I might consider it, because the experience would be new.

Along with that I’m also trying to be discerning when looking at stuff to see if what I’m looking at seems like something that’s been planned out or run before. Is it an established system or is it an RPG system that I haven’t heard of before? Because, you might get someone who is testing out a new system and it might not be enjoyable. I feel like RPG’s are also hit and miss because you don’t know what sort of group dynamic you are going to get. You hope it will be a good one, but you really don’t know. So I like to make sure that I really like the idea of the game. So, that’s why I’m drawn towards Dresden Files games, I think that seems cool to play in that world, no matter who is at the table. This is also a reason that I have a lot of board games on the list. The board games almost all already exist, so you know that they are at least interesting enough to get published, even if the game isn’t for me in the end. It won’t be a bad experience.

Another thing, and probably the final thing, to consider is how much time you want this to eat up. Like I said, I want to do a lot of browsing of the dealer hall to see the new games and pick up new games. But there are some of the events that are two hours I’ve looked at, and some of them are four, and I even saw a Twilight Imperium game that is set for going eight hours. The longer they are, the fewer of them that you can do. I’m the type of person who would probably schedule stuff for in the morning and then go in the afternoon around to different booths and things like that, but we’ll have to see what we want to do.

That’s really all the advice I have for planning at this point in time. I’ll probably do something coming up here in a few weeks about packing and what you will want to think about bringing for a convention. Conventions are an interesting beast, and I’ve been to CONvergence and AcadeCon, a couple Con’s that are a bit smaller than GenCon, so this will be a cool new experience.

Let me know what sort of events you look to do at a con. Do you find that you fill up too much time or not enough?

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