Catch Up on the Top 100 Games

100 through 91
90 through 81
80 through 71
70 through 61
60 through 51
50 through 41
40 through 31
30 through 21
20 through 11

Top 100 Games (of all time) 2025 Edition – 10 through 1

10. Rebel Princess Deluxe Edition

Published By: Bezier Games
Designers: Daniel Byrne, Jose Gerardo Guerrero, Kevin Pelaez, Tirso Virgos

Buy Rebel Princess Deluxe Edition

The top trick taking game on my list is Hearts. Well, not completely Hearts, it’s Hearts with shenanigans and that is the element that makes it amazing. If you are familiar with Hearts, you know you don’t want to win the hearts because they are worth points. In this game, you are doing the same thing, but as princesses trying to dodge the proposals of the princes and of course the very dangerous frog princes.

But let’s talk about the shenanigans because that is where the game separates itself from Hearts. In Rebel Princess you each get a princess with a special power. It might be to force someone to lead a suit, or you take over the lead of a trick even if you didn’t win the previous one. They are once per round. The bigger shenanigans comes from the rule for each round. It tells you how to pass cards, but also then something special that round, like the number furthest from the led card wins the trick, to make the trick taking different.

9. Zenith

Published By: PlayPunk
Designers: Gregory Grard and Mathieu Roussel

Out Of Stock Currently

Zenith is the new one on the list, and it blew me away on BGA so much that I knew I needed to pick it up when it came out. Zenith is a two or four player, but really two player game where you are having a tug of war over different planets. When you get influence on a planet all the to your side, you get a token, and you win with three from one planet, four different ones, or five total.

But let’s talk about winning influence. The simplest way is to play a card down on your side of the table, that’ll move it one towards you and give you some other bonus. But to do that you need to pay the cost, so sometimes you need to do other actions to get more money. One of them is to discard a card for a bonus. Depending on the type of card, you get a different bonus for it, and you gain the leader token which means you get an extra card in hand. Finally there is technology which you use to gain bonuses but also move influence on planets.

8. Slay the Spire: The Board Game

Published By: Contention Games
Designers: Gary Dworetsky, Anthony Giovannetti, and Casey Yano

Buy Slay the Spire: The Board Game

You know that I love Slay the Spire the video game and the same is true for the board game. In the board game it’s the same thing as the video game, but everything is scaled down. This is a very smart decision because I don’t want to do a lot of math, but I still want to play the same game I love. So you climb the tower, you fight normal and elite monsters, and you rest and add cards, everything that you love about Slay the Spire the video game.

But there is an extra twist for the board game as well. In the board game you also can play it cooperatively. And I love that for the game because there is no reason that you shouldn’t be able to. It levels up how much health the boss has, and each character gets their own row of normal monsters to face. The cool thing about that row is that I can help you attack your row if your monsters are attacking for too much. Or you can help with mine, but whichever row you attack, you get attacked by your row. So there is a strategic puzzle to figure out as a group.

7. Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game

Published By: Portal Games
Designers: Jakob Lapot, Przemyslaw Rymer, and Ignacy Trzewiczek

Buy Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game

I might be the person in the world like Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game the most. But I think it is worth talking about and I think at least the core box is one that more people should play. The core box is a series of intertwined cases that you need to figure out the leads and what to track down. The best way, and I mean this as compliment, I can describe the game is that it’s like NCIS or CSI but fun because you are the detectives.

The game has so much going for it. You need to figure out what lead you want to track down, you need to take evidence to the lab and get your results, or you need to spend resources pressing people for more information. All of that is going to cost time, so you need to get it done before time runs out.

And all the cases are different. Even in the core box where they link together, they are all unique. And the one off cases are all different as well and set in different time periods or different locations. Even the Batman version of the game is a ton of fun.

6. Dice Throne

Published By: Dice Throne Inc.
Designers: Nate Chatellier, Aaron Hein, and Manny Trembley

Buy Dice Throne

Dice Throne is probably always going to be game in my Top 10. Mainly because they keep on coming out with more Dice Throne and I keep on buying it. But the game is a great plug and play game that can be described as battle Yahtzee. But that is not fair to the game because Dice Throne is more than that. Yes, it uses the Yahtzee style rolling to deal damage to your opponent, but the cards, and dice manipulation and how you work that together is where the game is so fun.

Plus, each character in the game is unique and does something different. Whether that is with Marvel and Gambit who has his aces that he can play, Doctor Strange who has spells that he can cast, or Scarlet Witch who can swap out the dice that her opponent roles. Or it is unique for the non-IP characters as well with the Gunslinger having a showdown type of defense, the Treant having sapplings that do unique things, or the Pyromancer building up their flames.

5. Aeon’s End

Published By: Indie Boards & Cards
Designers: Jenny Iglesias, Nick Little, and Kevin Riley

Buy Aeon’s End

I love deck-building and Aeon’s End is my favorite mainly deck-building game. I put it that way because I have another game that uses deck-building, but it is less of a deck-building game. This one is great because it gives you a boss battler as well as you play the game. You need to cast spells to deal with the bosses actions, minions, and hopefully knockdown the boss, the nemesis, if you can.

The game does a couple of fun things. Firstly, I like the turn order in the game, though I will say, I think that it makes it a two player game. The turn order is randomly drawn from a deck, so you might go twice in a row, if you have two of your number in there, or you might have the nemesis get multiple turns in a row. It keeps the game feeling tense and stressful. But I think it works best as a two player game because otherwise you might have a long time between turns.

Then the deck of cards. As you add cards and you need to draw again, you don’t shuffle the deck. Instead you just flip it and you draw from that. If you are smart, you can set it up so that you are drawing a strong hand. It is tricky, but it’s also a ton of fun when you get it right.

4. Lost Ruins of Arnak

Published By: Czech Games Edition (CGE)
Designers: Elwin, Min

Buy Lost Ruins of Arnak

This is the other game that has deck-building, but it’s less of the game. Lost Ruins of Arnak is a deck-building, worker placement and resource management game that I just love. The theme really helps sell me on the game where you are exploring the jungle and trying to become the most famous explorer. Yes, that theme is hiding behind the mechanisms in some ways, but it’s there.

The game is really a great puzzle as you need to figure out how to explore new locations, defeat those monsters, and go up a research track. But they do it thematically in some areas, and I love that. You can buy new gear with money, but when you do that, it goes to the bottom of your deck of cards. Why, because it needs time to ship over. But if you buy a relic, that’s there, and you can use it immediately. Or on the research track as you advance, you need to discover, magnifying glass, before you can write about it, journal.

And the Expedition Leaders makes the game even better. It means that each player is starting at a unique spot. And it helps shape how you want to solve the puzzle. I thin the game is a 9 for me without this, but with it, and it’s an easy addition, it’s an easy 10 and in my Top 10 of all time.

3. Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon

Published By: Awaken Realms
Designers: Krysztof Piskorski, Marcin, Swierkot

Buy Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon

Now a game that has been in my Top 10 for a long time with Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon. I still think this game has the best story and writing of any game that I’ve played. It does an amazing job of weaving together a narrative over three different campaigns. And you want to explore and read all the story. It’s so good and the storymode fixes the issue, that even though the regular game is a grind when it comes to resources, this is still a game that I love.

I think that the game works so well too in what you are doing. The combat and diplomacy checks you come across offer interesting puzzles of card play. And then when you go to a new card and you find new choices, it’s really interesting. I also should mention with combat, I like how you sometimes just want to runaway. A combat is going to be too hard for you and instead of taking a ton of damage, if your draw bad cards, you should just run.

As an aside, I can’t wait to play the new game in the series. But it’s being waited on because of other campaign games to play. I’ve heard it is less grindy, so if you are worried about that in the base game, maybe check out that version.

2. Arkham Horror: The Card Game

Published By: Fantasy Flight Games
Designers: Nate French, MJ Newman

Buy Arkham Horror: The Card Game

At number two is a return to glory in some ways. I think that Arkham Horror: The Card Game was in the Top 3 or so when I first started the list. But it is back here because I’ve gotten to play more over this past year. I’ve done the story in the core box and started on another one. And I built my own character for that which is fun to do as well.

The game is just impressive with how it uses cards in such an interesting way. I love how they become a map for the house, city, or whatever you are in. And how they use simple symbols to help you know what connects to what in the game. And each campaign feels different. I played the Arkham Nights one at a game store, and that was super unique and fun, while the base box felt like a great introduction, and the Scarlet Keys is already shaping up to be different.

I also like that each character you build is going to be good at different things. So you need to balance the party. But you might want a challenge and create a different and unique combination of characters to go with as well.

1. Frosthaven, Gloomhaven, Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion

Published By: Cephalofair Games
Designer: Isaac Childres

Buy Frosthaven

The final spot on the Top 100 Games (of all time) 2025 Edition is the same as it’s always been. This is Gloomhaven, or Frosthaven, or Jaws of the Lion. They are all the same game, though Frosthaven does add in a city management phase which is very fun for the game as well. This is an amazing dungeon crawler game and very worth checking out if you haven’t played a dungeon crawler before. Especially Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion as a starting point for the game.

In this game you play different scenarios and you need to figure out with your unique character how to defeat the enemies and complete the objectives. In Gloomhaven a lot of the objectives are defeat everyone. But Frosthaven adds in more variety, so you need to figure out the puzzle.

And how do you do that? You do that with playing cards from your hand. Each card has a top action, a bottom action, and an initiative on it. You pick one of the two cards to set your initiative and then generally you have a plan of which top of a card and which bottom you want to use. But, if the board changes, maybe the enemies move on you, you can adjust which top and bottom you want to use from the cards you play. And did I mention that each character is unique and feels different in how they play, because they do. And you get a try a lot of them.

Thank You For Joining The Journey

I hope that you’ve had fun with my Top 100 Games (of all time) 2025 Edition. I always have fun putting together this list. And I apologize for it being a bit delayed in when the article came out as compared to the video on Malts and Meeples YouTube channel. My schedule has been weird as of late.

So with that, be aware I will be streaming as I can. I still want to go through my 101 through 200, aka the games that I still love but couldn’t crack the Top 100. And really, I love a lot more games than just 200. But that video is going to come out when it can. And it might not come out live depending on what my potential filming schedule looks like. The same with other streaming like Legendary Kingdoms and Baldur’s Gate 3. And then I have other games I want to play too, like Regicide Legacy that are going to stream well.

So all of that is to say, thank you for watching. And subscribe and click the notification bell to know when new videos come up on the Malts and Meeples channel.

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Top 100 Games (of all time) – 20 through 11

20. For Northwood! A Solo Trick-Taking Game

Published By: Side Room Games
Designer: Wilhelm Su

Buy For Northwood!

A solo trick-taking game seems like it shouldn’t work. But For Northwood! works really well. It’s a simple trick taker, you need to follow suit if you can. But the twist is that you need to win a specific number of tricks each time. You play over eight rounds and need to win between 0 and 7 tricks, exactly. That sounds impossible, but you get powers that help you manipulate your hand. It’s always a question of, which one do you go for, in terms of tricks to win, and as you get further along, can get manipulate your hand to make it work.

19. Marvel Champions: The Card Game

Published By: Fantasy Flight Games
Designers: Michael Boggs, Nate French, and Caleb Grace

Buy Marvel Champions

I love Marvel and this is the game that gives me the Marvel feel to it. You are a superhero and you want to stop the bad guys scheme and defeat them. But, thematically, when you are in your hero form the bad guy is going to fight you and you take damage. So you need to manage going between your superhero and alter ego form so you don’t get hit. Of course as your alter ego, the villains are going to be scheming away. And you can create all sorts of fun combinations of heroes and villains to face off.

18. Floriferous

Published By: Pencil First Games
Designers: Eduardo Baraf and Steve Finn

Buy Floriferous

This game is one that I think is really overlooked in the gaming community. It’s a clever drafting game that does two very interesting things. The first thing is how scoring works. You don’t have much scoring that just happens, instead you draft your scoring cards. So there is always a choice between, do I draft more flowers or do I draft scoring cards. The other is how the drafting works, and this it maybe a bigger twist. You draft from a column, how high you are in the column determines when you draft next round. So it’s very possible you want to draft a less ideal card to get a perfect card.

17. Stars of Akarios

Published By: OOMM (Open Owl Studios)
Designers: Brendan McCaskell, Jonathan Thwaites

Buy Stars of Akarios

I love my big campaign games, and Stars of Akarios is one of my favorites. This one works so well for me with the tactical space combat, the planetary exploration, and a story that doesn’t take itself too seriously. The tactical space combat really shines in the game as you use your dice to position your ship, attack, and avoid the enemies the best you can. And the exploration is a bit like The 7th Continent/Citadel where you flip over cards and create a map and really explore as you go.

16. Clank!: Catacombs

Published By: Dire Wolf
Designer: Paul Dennen

Buy Clank! Catacombs

While i just did sell all of my other Clanks, this Clank! Catacombs spot is for all of them. Clank! is a push your luck game where you build up a deck of cards to get into a catacombs, in this case, and get out with the most points and best treasure that you can. Of course, if you are too noisy doing that, you clank, and when the enemy activates it might knock down your health. So it’s this push your luck in making noise, and going deeper. I like, too, with Clank! Catacombs, the map gets built as you go, so the board really is different every time.

15. Roll Player Adventures

Published By: Thunderworks Games
Designers: Keith Matejka, James William Ryan, and Peter Andrew Ryan

Buy Roll Player Adventures

Another big campaign game here with Roll Player Adventures. This one is all about dice manipulation and a fun story. I had a great time playing through the first campaign, and the additional one that I have, I need to get to the table. The system works well, though I will say, with four players it becomes a bit easier than at lower player counts. But the simple map movement, the story, the skill checks and of course combat and leveling up make this a fun time.

14. The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game

Published By: Office Dog
Designer: Bryan Bommueller

Buy The Fellowship of the Ring Trick-Taking Game

I like trick-taking games. Not a ton make it to my Top 100 games mainly because a lot feel similar. The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game is one that is different. Yes, it leans into a lot of standard things, but it’s also cooperative and story based. There are other cooperative ones out there, but the story based feels unique. Especially because this closely follows the books, so you get to chapters with Goldberry and Tom Bombadil as required characters which is fun. And the cooperative elements are challenging for the game.

13. Pirates of Maracaibo

Published By: dlp games
Designers: Ralph Bienert, Ryan Hendrickson, and Alexander Pfister

Buy Pirates of Maracaibo

The second of three new games on this part of the lit in a row. Pirates of Maracaibo is a pirate resource management game. I normally would want it to have more adventure, but this one is a ton of fun. I love building up my ship and seeing what strategy of building up ship, getting treasure, exploring, and competing quests can lead to victory. And it is great because all of them feel good to do. It isn’t a game where I feel like I need to go one way, though, I think some ways are more consistent.

12. Mistborn: The Deckbuilding Game

Published By: Brotherwise Games
Designer: John D. Clair

By Mistborn The Deck Building Game

Another deckbuilding game on the list here with Mistborn. And I like Mistborn just a bit better than Clank! because of a little more pure deck building. But also it has a lot of fun elements to the game. It leans into Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn world and let’s you burn metals to play cards. I also like the turn track, you always bump up in power as you go up the track. This makes for a really great experience of feeling like the game is ramping up.

11. Sleeping Gods

Published By: Red Raven Games
Designer: Ryan Laukat

Buy Sleeping Gods

The final game on the list is another big one, though not a campaign game. Sleeping Gods is a sand box story game where you are dropped into an unknown world and need to find and deal with totems. Of course, it’s a new land, so you don’t know where those are. And there are monsters and other interesting things to deal with. You need to control 9 crew, but really, it’s one turn and you just need to remember a few key abilities as you play. So it sounds like a lot, either cooperative or solo, but it’s not too bad.

Join Next Week

Just as a reminder, I am streaming new videos most Wednesdays. Let me know what you want to see me play next on Wednesdays after this list is done. You can subscribe to the channel and click notify to know whenever a new video comes out. Currently I am playing through Legendary Kingdoms on Monday and then my wife and I are playing Baldur’s Gate 3 on Fridays. So join us for those videos.

And thank you for checking out the video and articles. Let me know what your favorite game from this chunk of 10 is and which one you would love to get played.

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How to Play Arigato

Arigato is all about getting the most points that you can. You do this in a few ways, by sending workers to deliver their offering. You get points for artisans in your village, potentially, and you get points for completing the main objectives. At the end of 12 rounds, the person with the most points is the winner.

10 of the 12 rounds are going have those main objectives to complete. The objectives might be about having a number of artisans in your village with offering tokens, different or same resources, or total of number of artisans who have given an offering and more. The more of them you complete, the more points you get from them.

Morning Phase

You play the game over a few phases. The first one is the morning phase. In the morning phase you get five artisans and you split them into three groups. One artisan goes into your village. Each artisan is limited, and the card shows, as to where you can place them in your village. If you want to place an artisan and a spot is blocked you can discard an artisan from that spot to place them.

The other divide the other four two and two. Two artisans will get discarded for resources based off of their color. And the other two artisans get passed to your opponent at the start of the next day or round. Those will be used to create their new hand of five artisans.

Day Phase

During the day phase you flip over your cards, all are played face down, and you gain resources for them. You check and see if any of the artisans in town have an ability to trigger. Generally these abilities either give you more points or they give you more resources. Some abilities also trigger in the dusk phase, but we won’t cover that phase right now.

Then you spend your resources to place offering tokens onto your artisans. Just because an artisan has an offering token on it does not mean you need to move it to deliver that offering immediately. You might find that you don’t have the right combination of resources to complete offerings. If you want, you can trade two items in for one of another type. Once an artisan has an offering token on it, you can send them to deliver that offering whenever you want.

Dusk Phase

At the Dusk Phase a few things can happen, but the biggest is you check and see if you completed the objective for the day. If you did, you mark that with taking a token. And you also check and see if any of your artisans have things that would be triggered at dusk. The final thing that happens at dusk, though I might be off on order, is you discard your resources to get down to seven total. This is fairly rare that you will find yourself with more.

The game, like I said, ends after twelve days. You check to see your score for all the main objectives you completed. Then you add up the points you have taken during the game, and the points on the artisans who have delivered offerings. The player with the most points is the winner.

What Doesn’t Work?

The one negative I can think of is that there are a good number of symbols. On the artisans in particular you need to know what each section does and when the village ability is going to activate and what one it is. This is an issue only at the beginning playing on BGA because the more you play, the more you know just from looking at the symbols.

My hope, though, is for the physical version of the game, there are player aids. You don’t need anything much for it, just let the players know what the symbols are for because there are enough of them that it’ll be annoying to reference the rule book or pass around the rule books.

What Works?

Phases

I think that the different phases work quite well. Mainly because everyone is doing them at the same time. So it is generally a solitaire game. That means, though, that no player is going to have that much downtime. It’ll mainly just be waiting for the other players to complete their phase. And the phases are simple enough that it shouldn’t take too long.

With that comment about solitaire, I do want to comment about how it’s not purely solitaire. It is best to select cards in the dawn phase that is best for yourself. But if you find that you are not getting what you need, you also are able to pass on cards so that your opponent next turn is less likely to get what they need. It is a minor interaction, but can be a useful one at times.

Scoring

I really like the scoring in the game as well. All three elements work well in Arigato. I like that I can plan for those main objectives to get them, though, it’s improbable that you’ll get them all. But if you just go for those objectives, someone can score a lot of points from the artisans in their village and make up ground. And also getting a lot of artisans to deliver offerings is worth a lot of points.

Engine Building

Finally, the engine building in the village is fun. It adds to what you are thinking about when you pick which card to add or what cards to pass or keep for resources. You can go for a village that kicks out a ton of resources and rotate that and really focus on getting offerings delivered. Or you might go for one that doesn’t produce as many but is going to give you a lot of points from villagers. It’s up to you, and I like that variety.

Who Is Arigato For?

I think that people who like engine building are going to like like Arigato. But it is nice that it is not a massive engine that you build. It is only ever four artisans and often fewer. So this one is going to work well for that engine building but also for people who want to learn engine building. The drawback is, of course, the symbols, but that is common with engine building games.

Final Thoughts and Grade on Arigato

I really like Arigato. Even though my first play is not great, because of all the symbols, every play after I feel like I learn more and more about the game. And it is fun to explore the engine building that is done. Especially since it is possible for it to go different ways and how you can use them to your advantage in those different ways. If the village were larger it might feel like a lot of upkeep, but four artisans in your village is the perfect amount for the game.

It is also nice that all the turns are at the same time. Again, that often lends itself to being a bit more solitaire in nature. But in Arigato that isn’t a bad thing. Like I said, it is possible to toss some cards to your opponent that they might not want. But that is not the focus of the game. I like a game where it feels like what I do is awesome, and I can mess with you a little bit. Arigato is a game like that.

My Grade: A
Gamer Grade: B+
Casual Grade: C+
Luck (out of 10): 4
Strategy (out of 10): 5

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Games 20 through 11 of 2024

Now, first off, I do want to say, there are some games on the list that I don’t really enjoy. The bottom three I find to be poor or just okay, but let’s get to them.

20. Takenokolor

Takenokolor is a roll and write game where what you are rolling is the pens. However, the game itself is really simple and the choices are generally very obvious. They do have a few different “boards” that you can play on, but even the more complex ones tend not to offer that much more choice than the others. It feels like a very basic roll and write game with the gimmick that you are rolling pens. And even the added complexity doesn’t make the game more fun, it’s still very basic, just extra rules for the sake of extra rules.

19. Landmarks

Landmarks is a party style of game where one person is “it” and they are giving clues to lead the other players around a map. And the clues they give are one word based off of other words on the board. Basically, there are hexes, three of them have words on them, to start the game, and the clue giver gives a clue and the other players need to figure out where it makes sense to place that new tile. Does it make sense to connect to two words, or is the clue giver trying to keep you away from some.

Now, I said at the beginning that I wasn’t a huge fan of the bottom three. I think I want to try this one again. My hopes are fairly limited that it’d be a consistent hit for me, but I do believe, in the right group, this could be a fun game.

18. Odin

Odin is a card shedding game. Probably the best known card shedding game right now is Scout, which just broke into the Board Game Geek Top 100. Odin isn’t that, it’s a solid but simple card shedding game that works on a more basic principle than scout. You play out cards either as a bigger number of one color or a bigger number of a set of one number than the previous person did. Then you take one card to add to your hand from what the previous person played.

I think that this one is probably a 7 for me at 2 or 3 players if I were to rank it out of 10. But it plays higher than that. And at higher numbers than that it’s just very random. And you find lots of turns where you aren’t able to play and that might happen several rounds in a row. In Scout at least you are picking up new cards when you can’t play, here you are just left stuck with what you have.

17. Icecool Wizards

Icecool Wizards is not as good as Icecool. But if you want a smaller box and a bit more game play, there is an option for you. The core mechanisms remain the same. You flick around a penguin, but now you are trying to get elements to cast spells, basically set collection. And you do that by flicking your penguin over the elements and then flicking them over spells to collect those spells.

The one thing that keeps it from being up higher is that there is almost more luck than the basic game. What do you flip out for a spell, who knows. Now that balances out somewhat over the course of the game, but it’s just an extra element to the game that isn’t completely needed.

16. Festival

Next up we have Festival. I like games with fireworks, fireworks are fun. But Festival is just fine for me because it’s basically a pattern building game. And while I think it works well, it’s very abstract, and I’m just okay with abstract games. You take one of two tiles that’s visible and you’re trying to complete goals. But, instead of taking tiles you can reserve a goal as well because you can only score goals that you reserve.

Honestly, I think it’s the reserving the goals that bugs me about the game. It’s an extra turn that you take, and generally you reserve and score it the same turn. Unless you spy someone else going for it, you’re not going to waste a turn grabbing it early to then never be able to score it. It might be more exciting of a game if you just scored if you were the first to get it, though maybe a bit more deterministic, I see you one turn ahead of me for a goal, I pivot goals, whereas now you can steal it out from under another player.

15. Metrorunner

Next up is Metrorunner. This is one that I got to play at Gen Con and it’s a fun game. You are going around a rondel collecting cubes and trading them in to complete missions. It’s not that super unique a game, but I like that rondel mechanism in it. It feels different while still being an accessible and easy to understand and play game.

But the game has an interesting extra element to it. In Metrorunner you also have a sliding puzzle game in the middle. It reminds me of I believe it was called Pipes Dream where you connect one side of the board to another specific side with pipes. You do that here, but you do it with limited moves and only a few special abilities to help you. I won the game because I am very good at figuring out those puzzles, and you can do it a lot in the game.

14. Captain Flip

This one is a game that I’d love to add to my collection. I own 15 & 17 already, but Captain Flip is maybe the last one that I don’t own on the list. This is a fun game of drawing a tile, you see one side and that tells you some of the scoring that might be on that tile. And it is scoring that you can use and add to your pirate ship. But on the flip side is some other scoring and that scoring might be better. But, once you flip you are locked in on that side of the tile. So do you push your luck or not. It’s a very light game but a good time.

13. Adulthood

Adulthood is a game with a fun theme of being an adult, though, I’m already an adult and I think the game is more fun than real life. You have less taxes that you need to do in the game. But the game is all about how you spend your time and money. And the artwork is great and goes well with the theme because it just creates this fun experience.

I love how you might lose your job but you find a new one easily. Or you fall in love and get married and how you have a new action spot to spend time and money on. Plus you also are trying to play out other cards that are life experiences. If you do well with those, they are great way to score points, but a lot of them require that you have other life experiences first. No going to the PTA meeting without having a kid first. And who knows if you find that kid because it’s a big deck of cards you dig through.

12. Cafe Baras

Cafe Baras is a game with a really fun theme. You are Capybara baristas and you want to make your best coffee shop. So you buy items to put on your menu. Then you bring in customers who will give you money. And if you match everything a customer wants, you can get a repeat customer, which is going to give you points. Plus there are special customers. They score at the end of the game and only if you cafe meets certain things.

The game is from Kids Table Board Games and it is light. But because o that it plays fast as well. And it’s a pretty easy game to teach. I don’t think with a silly cute theme I’d want it to be longer. So Cafe Baras is a very fun time.

11. Stonespine Architects

And just missing my Top 10 for 2024 is Stonespine Architects. Though it is one of my most played games in 2024, at least in person. I really like this game because it’s all about building out a dungeon. And you want your dungeon to meet certain things. If it does you are going to get points. But there is an element of drafting cards to add to your dungeon. And then buying items to enhance your dungeon.

I also really like that you draft some scoring objectives as well. Players add three to the game as they play, each of them unique to that player. So while there are shared scoring elements, your dungeon is going to become more unique. And when cards don’t quite fit perfectly, well that might work for a scoring objective that you have.

Final Thoughts

I’m sure that I’m missing games that I played in 2024. Some because maybe they didn’t get rated from a quick play at Gen Con. Or maybe I just missed that date, but 2024 was a year where I got in a lot of fun games. And I also know that there are games from 2024 that I haven’t gotten to that I really want to play. In fact, I see one from where I’m sitting with Stamp Swap, and I know there are more as well.

What are some of your favorite games from 2024? But not you #1 game, bring that to Malts and Meeples tomorrow night as I stream at 9 PM Central my 10 through 1.

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How to Play Aquatica

This, like I said, is a hand management and engine building game where you try and generate the most points. Whomever has the most points at the end of the game, and there are three game end triggers, will win the game.

But Aquatica comes more down to how you use the cards in your hand to generate more cards and complete locations. And, in a lot of ways the game is about how you can combo locations together. Each location has some actions that you can do. They might give you more money or fighting power to get more locations. They might push up past blank actions on locations. Or they might let you score locations that you’ve used all of the actions for. Plus a little bit more.

So on each turn you can play out a single card action. But you chain together as many location actions as you want and makes sense. I say makes sense because you might chain some actions together that you don’t use the benefit. For example, I might not use the fighting power that I get on a turn. But I want to push a card past that to get the benefit I do want or to be able to store it as a treasure.

Here’s Rodney with more.

Chaining Actions

Let’s talk a bit about chaining actions or chaining location actions because I think that is the strongest element of the game. It is the part of the game what you are really puzzling out with the help of manta rays. I didn’t mention manta rays, but they provide actions like the locations do. However, they can refresh when you refresh your hand of cards.

But the chaining of actions provides an interesting puzzle to figure out. You need to figure out which actions, like I said, to push past and basically waste. They might be a waste, but it might help you score more points or score an end game scoring objective faster than your opponents. So there is strategy around it.

And a lot of the locations, you find, take a fair amount to get. But that is again where and why you might skip on a locations actions. I say skip, I mean pass over without the benefit. So you pass over so that you can get what you need to buy or conquer another location. You still need to think about the blank spaces. Because you are not allowed to just pass over a blank space. You need an arrow to do that, so it’s an interesting puzzle.

The Manta Rays

The manta rays are a fun addition to the game. Like the locations they are a resource that you can basically spend for coins, attack power, or to move locations further up. But unlike locations it isn’t a use it and that section or action is hidden. Manta rays flip over and there are a few cards what when you play them flip them back. So there is good interesting with the character cards that you use.

I also like around the manta rays how they help with Aquatica’s end scoring objectives. In that the four you start out with are the scoring markers for when you score the objectives. So the first person to score them gets 8 points, next 5, and than 3 after that. But as a benefit of not scoring, you keep your manta rays around longer. And as long as you can complete all of the objectives later in the game, you keep that benefit going.

The Boring Part of Aquatica

Now Aquatica isn’t all fun and excitement of how you chain your location actions together. You get a main action in the game, and that is playing a card that does, generally one thing or one pretty basic element of the game. It interacts with the main board to recruit a character or get a location. That is about it. There is a bit more, but not that much more.

And even recruiting a character, a new character with a new version of an action is not that exciting. By, because the actions don’t vary much or feel that much stronger than they do with your starting actions. The only reason to recruit more characters is that they are slightly better and you need them for an objective. Otherwise, I think just the basic actions might be about as good.

This element of the game just feels lacking. As you recruit characters it costs money. That cost is from 5 down to 0 and everything slides down. I’m not sure that it’s worth paying more than one or two coins to get something. It’s never worth spending resources which can get locations to go all the way to 5. No card is that much better. So recruiting feels more like a bust of a turn.

Final Thoughts on Aquatica

I want more in this game. I don’t think it’s that often where I complain about a game having too little. And really, I don’t want that much more. I just want the cards for the characters I recruit to feel cooler. They are all so one and done that it doesn’t feel like I’m setting anything up or being that clever about it. And in a lot of ways that is holding the rest of the game back for me.

Why is that when I like the manta rays and the locations? Well, when I flip manta rays and slide up cards, it is all for an action that doesn’t feel that exciting. I complete this great puzzle of sliding cards around to get to 8 conqueror that I use when I play down a card that gets me a location. No points right then, which is okay, a benefit I can use right away, unless it just let’s me buy stuff or conqueror stuff. In which case, I get a great toy for the future with a pretty boring and basic action.

That said, I want to look into the expansions. This game might benefit from them because it might add variety. If it adds variety, then I think the game and the basic character actions might seem more interesting. And I need to play with the king, the powerful characters you can start with. It won’t make the other recruiting feel better, but it might make the game feel more interesting from the start with the actions I can do.

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ISS Vanguard vs Stars of Akarios

Going down to, or not going down to a planet. Let’s talk about how it went going down to a planet this time. And in all fairness we knew that it wasn’t likely that we’d be able to do much. It tells you that much as you are planning. But it is an interesting twist on the game.

Not A Planet

Firstly, it’s clearly a way to block off content. It gives you stuff to do over there. And I’ll be spending energy to get some of those done next time. But it basically says, this content is meant for when you are playing further in the game. So even though you tried to get to it now, you won’t be able to. But it does in a way that is thematic to the game. There is a storyline reason as to why not.

Ship Phase

And I think that is smart. Now it’s interesting because I just wrapped up a ship phase. And I did a lot in the ship phase to show off what can happen. That said, now I get to go back and do it again. I think for some people that is going to be disappointing. The ship phase, which I flew through this last session, doesn’t have as much story. So is it worth it getting through it again.

There are some areas where I feel only like kind of. Can I recruit more crew, I’m not sure. I’ll probably see about doubling up and going back to some places again, if that is allowed. But I have four command tokens, so that is what I’d prefer to do. Maybe the situation room, but for sure research and production to see what we can find. Because completing research or a new production project is kind of the most interesting thing.

This, I think, is where having more players would be interesting for the game. Planetary exploration, sure, it’d be fun to share the story and decision making. But I feel like I know what I want to do and make that part go quicker because of that. On the flip side, when it comes to the ship. I think discussing with more people would make that part feel more important. It is important, but it’d make it feel more important which would lean into that bigger feeling of the game.

Upcoming Streams

Like I said, ISS Vanguard wraps up next week. The plan is to explore some of the other options in our system and see what happens. It’ll be a bit sad to put this down, but it’s now a game that I know I really want to share with other people. 8 PM Central Time on Wednesdays. Though the easiest way to know is by subscribing and clicking that notification bell to know when I put up something new.

And then on Mondays I stream at 8:30 PM normally. That is the goal, anyways, sometimes it shifts a little bit because of podcast recording or editing. I think my plan will be to start playing through My City – Roll and Build. I’m not sure how long the games will take, so it might be a couple of games a stream or just one a stream, we’ll have to see.

And, again, if you want to know when I go live or a new video goes up (it’s basically always live), please consider subscribing. You can do that here. And click that notification bell on the channel and you’ll always know when I go live.

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How To Play – Lost Ruins of Arnak

The goal Lost Ruins of Arnak is to accumulate as many points as possible. You do this by going up a research track, exploring locations, defeating monsters, and buying cards to put in your deck that will give you abilities and points. You do all of this over five rounds.

The main actions you do on the board are activated by placing out workers. But you only get two workers per round and rounds do not only last two turns per person. While those workers can be used for big pieces of the action, such as exploring a location, gets golden idols – worth points – and then fighting monsters at those locations, also worth points. Much of the game is around pushing up a research track and buying the cards.

The research track, if you make it to the top, is one of the best ways to get points. Though, when everyone knows that and works towards it, the points that you get don’t differ massively. But if you don’t make it to the top, you will be behind. But in game, it mainly gives you additional resources to spend. The cards are where you get more of your additional actions. Buying and playing the cards really gives you an opportunity to create an engine of what you are doing.

What Doesn’t Work

Two things, that at least without the expansion, I feel like don’t work extremely well. The first is how important the research track is. And this is really the main complaint. You need to make it to the top of the research track. If you don’t, you might do really well in other areas, but you will end up behind in points. It is just too much to catch up on. Now, that isn’t to say you can ignore everything else. The points are that much, and like I said, the research track when everyone makes it to the top is less impactful. It’s just very important to make it to the top.

The other thing is maybe more of a personal thing. But I wish that I had one more round. Granted, you’d be pushing less on the research track and optimizing for that if you had one more round. But with one more round, I feel like I could just have that one more great turn where I am using all of those cool cards that I put in my deck more than once, maybe twice. I say this knowing that most likely what would happen is I’d want another round. So five is solid for the game to keep it from going too long. But I wouldn’t mind six.

What Works

Deck Building

The deck building in this game is meaningful. And I really appreciate that. In a lot of bigger deck building games, yes it matters, but you end up with so many cards, and cycle through it so many times, you can buy whatever you can afford, for the most part. A thinner optimized deck might be better, but if you get points on cards, might as well add in another card that gives you points. Here it really matters because you don’t get that many and you don’t see them too many times.

I also like that with the deck building the cards you buy go on the bottom of the deck. So, with a thinner deck and drawing up to five cards in hand each turn, you see cards fast. I buy two cards on turn one, I know I’ll see them and can use them on turn two. Not having that delay of waiting for them to get shuffled in, and then they could be shuffled to the bottom of the deck is really nice.

Items and Relics

And I like with the relics that you get to use them right away and then they go to the bottom of the deck. Thematically, if you get supplies, they are shipped in, so you get them soon but not right away. If you get a relic, you’ve found it in the ruins. So you can use that right away. But as a trade off it uses your explore tokens to get it, which you need for the map, and has a cost for future uses.

Worker Placement

Finally, with the worker placement, I like how that grows with options throughout the game. At the start of the game you put your workers on camps to just gain resources and then hopefully you can explore fast. The locations that you explore cost a bit more to activate in future rounds, but you can activate them again, or anyone can. So now you are able to go to those spots as well and activate them. Which probably give you more resources or a variety of resources.

I also like with the worker placement that you only have two. More workers certainly could give you a ton more to do, but with the tight number of spaces to start, you’d have to add in more. And it makes how and when you use them even more impactful. If you can find a way to move a worker through an item or a relic, that is huge. And it is a really interesting part of the puzzle of the game as to how you can utilize your workers.

Who Is It For?

I think this is for someone pretty early into hobby gaming. I wouldn’t introduce hobby board games to someone with Lost Ruins of Arnak. But if they have played some other games, Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride, Catan, and the likes, I don’t think this game is too bad to pick up.

Or it is for someone who might not be that interested in worker placement. I am someone who thinks worker placement is fine, but thematically not many of them interest me. Lost Ruins of Arnak has that fun Indiana Jones type them on a worker placement game. So that intrigued me more so, and with deck building pulled me in. I think it can be an entry point or a worker placement that is easier to get people to play.

Final Thoughts on Lost Ruins of Arnak

I really enjoy Lost Ruins of Arnak. And I suspect that I will enjoy it more as I add in the expansion stuff. It changes up the board for the research track. And it gives you variable player powers, which is something I really like. I like being unique as I play. But even without that, I really enjoy the puzzle of the game.

My negative of the research track is less around it not being interesting. The research track is pretty fun. It is more that you need to do the research track and get to the top to really have that much of a shot at winning the game. But, like I said, everyone needs to do that, which means that the points aren’t too different and it does come down to everything else in the game.

My Grade: B+
Gamer Grade: B+
Casual Grade: B

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How To Play Res Arcana?

So, like I said, Res Arcana is an engine building game. You play down cards to produce resources, transform resources, and then use those resources to get points. That is pretty standard for a lot of engine building games. The trick with Res Arcana is that your engine can only become so large.

As you play, you are paying for cards that are going to stay in play. And you are doing that from a deck of eight cards that are your own. There are some places of power and monuments that you can get throughout the game. But generally, your engine is going to be those cards. The game recommends some cards to start with, but after that you can draft them.

So, Res Arcana is less about building out that perfect engine, but figuring, with leveraging the cards you have, how to get the places of power and monuments that are going to be your main ways of getting points. But the cards in your hand will be what drive your engine. And at the end of the round you check to see who has the most points, if no one is at 10 or more, the game goes another round. And that continues until someone is at 10 or more points and at the end of the round the player with the most points wins.

What Don’t I Like?

I am a little bit worried about the card pool in this game and the number of places of power. In the base box there are five places of power, each with two sides, and they can be in any combination. But two games is all you need to see all of the places of power. And the deck of cards isn’t that big either. Yes, I only play with eight a time, but it isn’t a big deck of cards.

And if you play with four players, you see even more of the deck, even if you aren’t building out the engine yourself. I think that this is a very correctible issue, and I already own the first expansion for Res Arcana. But I think it is worth noting that the base box might be a little bit lighter than I’d prefer for some of the main components, places of power and cards.

What Do I Like?

Engine Building

I really enjoy the engine building in this game. Mainly that you activate part of your engine on each of your turns. So even as you get later into the game, turns don’t take too long. Often engine building games can suffer from an issue where as you do more turns take longer and there is even more downtime. And Res Arcana doesn’t fully fix this, I’ll explain in a moment. But in Res Arcana you only activate a single part of your engine.

Where it can create downtime, which is maybe a negative, but doesn’t happen too often, is that if I built my engine to take a lot of turns, I might have more turns in a round than you do. That means, especially in a higher player count game, that you could be sitting at the end of a round for a while. I find, though, that most people’s engines take a similar number of turns.

Places of Power

Next, I like that the places of power change up between games. I know I said it’s a negative, but the places of power offer your biggest point generating engine piece. It’s not that I don’t like the places of power, I just want more. And the expansion does offer two more. So that is more variability. But these places of power really give you a way to focus your engine building. Yes, you are limited to your cards, but figuring out which place of power is right for you is really interesting.

Drafting

I also really like the drafting in the game. I think that with most gamers, I’d draft from the get go. For newer gamers the base cards are good, but it’s more fun to draft. You can, based off of your starting hand of cards, start to figure out your engine. I see what I think is the best card, I take that, and now I hope you pass me something that will build off of it. And I think after a game, even with new players, I’d move to drafting.

Plus, I like that you draft in two groups of four. It’s a minor thing, but it means you can plan less with your drafting. And because it’s fewer cards to start, you can hate draft less, which is a bad plan in this game. And while I don’t mind a little bit of hate drafting, if a game were to encourage it, it would drop it down for me.

Who is it For?

I think that Res Arcana is mainly a engine building game for gamers. It is fast, so it might be a filler engine building game for some gamers, but it’ll still be fun. Res Arcana is just complex enough that I do think a lot of new gamers or people who just play gateway games, it might be a bit much.

That said, while I think the initial teach and game might feel like a lot. I could see it being one that grows for a lot of newer gamers They start to see how all the pieces work together and now the game is a while lot more interesting. It is a game, even for myself, it took playing it to see how all the pieces of the game worked together. The rules do a solid job of teaching the game, but it’s not the easiest to see how it works until you play it.

Res Arcana Final Thoughts

I like this game in my plays. I think I do wonder how long a shelf life it might have. But at the same time, it is basically a filler length game. Though, thinking about it more, it’s a filler that is hard to teach. When I compare it to another engine building game, Homebrewer, I like that theme better, game length is a bit longer, but it’s easier to teach.

Unlike last game I reviewed, Res Arcana is definitely not leaving the collection anytime soon. And some of that is that I think expansions to keep adding to the game and keeping it fresh. Right now I still feel like I want to explore more. And I can see it being a game that grows on me, or fades. But I could see, if I learn how to teach it better, this being a good filler engine builder when we want to play something more, but that’s not too long.

My Grade: B+
Gamer Grade: B+
Casual Grade: C

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Pros

• Theme looks cool
• Nice Mech minis
• Price
• Good Rules explanation
• Pilot/Mech mechanic

Cons

• Shipping
• Previous Kickstarter didn’t succeed for it

Page

This campaign does so much right for me. Though, there are some concerns for some backers mainly because they can’t guarantee that VAT will be paid. But the page itself is laid out amazingly well. Yeah, you get the shots of the minis and everything shiny that you are going to get, but they have a massive rules section. It might not tell you how you do everything in the game completely, but it gives you a clear direction with it, and that’s way more than can be said for most Kicktarters. They do a good job of laying everything out and making it look like a really good game and campaign.

Game

So there’s one main thing about the is game that really interests me, and a lot of other things that look cool, but a bit more normal. In the game you have your pilot for your mech and you have your mech. Each pilot has four skills, and each mech matches up to two of those skills. The pilot aboard and mech board sit next to each other and you can see how that lines up, and depending on your combo, you’ll get a different feel with a different pilot each time for the same mech. I think that’s not extremely unique, but really cool and something that makes the game feel interesting and like it can grow a lot.

I also like that you can upgrade the mech in the game. You don’t start with weapons, you’re just a lowly mining mech or something like that, and you have to start out by collecting resources to get your weapons before you can even think about going and fighting mutants. This gives the game even more feel that it’ll be replayable over time because you don’t know what upgrades you’ll be seeing or what different set-ups you can create.

Back or Brick

So would I back this game, I’m changing up the verbiage there because sometimes I just can’t back a game for money reasons, but would I back this game? Yes, for me this is a Back not a brick. This game has a cool theme, and I like that it isn’t just run in there and punch stuff, you get to build up your mech the way that you want it. To me that is more interesting than it would be just as a dice chucker. Plus it seems replayable, and if it does well, I would guess we’ll see more mechs and more pilots to create an even greater diversity in the combinations.

So for you, is this a back or a brick?

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In Tainted Grail you take on the roles of 1 to 4 characters, these characters aren’t your typical heroes, they are the B-Team. You’re deeply flawed characters with an iffy backstory and something that is a negative for you. When the A-Team, those people from the farmhold of Caunacht who were more skilled and more important than you went missing, you were tasked to find them. It wouldn’t have been that big an issue, but the Wyrdness is starting to take back the land and the Menhir, statues that Arthur and his knights erected to drive back the Wyrdness, are going out. Can you find a way to save the lands of Avalon and keep the Wyrdness at bay, or will it fall? That’s the story of the game, the mechanics for most of the game aren’t that difficult. In it, you spend energy to explore locations move around the lands of Avalon and light the Menhir, but all of this is while you are trying to balance finding the resources you need to keep the Menhir going and fighting off monsters and convince hostile villages and farmholds that you means no harm. And when you fight or do a diplomatic encounter, the game changes. You are now in a tactical card playing phase where you are looking to change together cards to do damage, use abilities on those cards, and most importantly, leave yourself in position where you aren’t taking to much damage. It’s a giant puzzle to figure out as you chain moves together to take out monsters or string words and stories together to convince those doubting people.

Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon is split up into 15 chapters and each chapter can go between half an hour and probably up to two or so hours, maybe even longer as I’m in Chapter 2 and I’ve been playing for an hour and fifteen minutes, but I’m also streaming it (Here on Youtube). I think, if I had hit a couple more ideal battles, I’d be in a much better position, but you can check that out. So there is some luck in how long it takes, do you explore in the right direction, do you not find too difficult encounters, things like that. And I think that there is a little bit of early scaling that might not be quite correctly paced, I’ll talk about that in a second when I talk about some issues. But it really is this massive branching story which is even more impressive. I believe even as early as Chapter 3, depending on what you picked in Chapter 2, the game can branch into different parts of narrative and how you choose to solve everything. So this 30+ hours of game play is replayable as you can pick different paths to take, which ism extremely impressive to me. If I were playing with more than a single character, that would make a difference as well for me. I am really digging that piece of the game.

So, let’s talk about my first negative for the game quickly, and I hinted at it before, I feel like the monsters level slightly too fast. I get that this is a grim dark setting and it’s supposed to be hard. In Chapter 1, you have the first tier of monsters, I’m not going to say level 1 monsters, because some of them are a lot harder than others, in level 2, I added in tier 2 monsters, and maybe because of how I went about the game, I wasn’t able to level up my character as much, but right now I’m running away from 90% of the encounters that I face just to get as little damage as possible. I think either having more tiers of monsters or adding in a partial grouping of tier 2 monsters and encounters, and then finishing adding them in chapter 3 and slowing down that progression a little bit would still keep the game hard, but I’d only be running from 67% of them instead of most of them. And some of that is my fault as well, I am the type of poker player where I want to see the flop at least with almost any hand, and I know that’s not a good strategy, so I often hang in combat for a round and then drop out when I should just know to drop out right away, but I want to see if I can draw that one card that will help me crack the puzzle and win the encounter. This is a minor negative.

My other negative and this one is slightly larger, is that when you die you have to restart the game. If you’re smart, I’m not, you have a nice save sheet that you can use between chapters to save the game and come back, but I’m not smart, and people who are playing multiple chapters at a time are going to have the same issue. I wish that it was an official rule that you have to save between every chapter so that when you die you can restart the chapter. This game is really tough, and if I’m in chapter 8, I don’t want to start again at Chapter 1, even though I’ll know how to rush through it. Or, better yet, I wish that the beginning of each chapter told you how to reset the world, so yes, you might have to reset your character or take a hit to your character, but to be able to have a starting option for each chapter so that you don’t have to replay would be nice, because it would mean that if you are playing through, you’d be able to quickly get into the game again if you die. It could also work if you don’t want to do Chapter 1 again and get to where it branches faster, you’d be able to do that, because Chapter 1 is a bit of a prologue. Now, I just came up with a solution for some of my issues, and I’ll have to go back and implement that for myself, save at the end of every chapter, but it would be nice to have something more official.

Next, I want to talk about some things that others have brought up as negatives. It’s the time that the Menhir are lit and the amount of food that you need. People have claimed, and I can see why, that the game forces you to farm for certain things, you need to farm food so that you can eat every night, not become exhausted, and heal and have your terror go down (eating is good). But you also want to be exploring and doing other things not just farming food. The same with the Menhir. You need some resources, probably magic, so that you are going to need to farm that. One of the characters can produce their own magic, so that’s good for them, but the one that I’m playing actually needs an extra magic because of his flaw, so I need to farm even more magic. But all of that said, neither of those things are negatives for me. First, my character can produce food if I really need it in a pinch, so while it does take up energy to do that so I can’t do as much in terms of exploring and traveling I always have that option. It also is fine, because we knew the game was going to be like that going into it, or if people paid attention to the kickstarter and rules and so many things, it was obvious that this game was going to be tough to survive. The grind is going to be part of it, and I feel like most of the grind isn’t even that grindy, because it is going to drop you into a combat which is such a fun puzzle to try and figure out that it doesn’t just feel like wasted time. Though, as you can see, I think that the encounter level does go a bit fast. Mainly, this piece of the game is very thematic, and the Menhir running down it adds to the stress of the game, and you can do things to play in more of a story mode, and I think there are interesting ways that you could “cheat” if you wanted it to be purely story mode, but that would lose some of the challenge and tension of the game.

But there are so many good things about the game, let’s start with the Exploration Journal. This thing is massive, and it has so much story in it. You feel like you’re always jumping into it, and there are so many options and statuses that come from it, that I don’t think it would ever be possible to get them all or read through all of it in a single game, and I love that. Plus, that then makes it really replayable. It also makes the world really immersive. All of the locations that you can go have a lot of history and depth built into them, and I’ve started running into side quests and things to explore that might create a more interesting story and more history that can be unlocked so that I can fully understand the world. And there are going to be two more expansions to the game, one before and one after the time frame of the base game, so I’m going to unlock the world history. I also can see, because of the amount of exploration how it would be fun to just be the keeper of the book, almost a game master, and lead other people through the journey so they aren’t getting spoiled to.

The encounter system, both combat and diplomatic, I really like as well. I’ve called it a puzzle and it really is. Cards connect on various keys and open up other various keys (I’m going to mainly give combat as the example), and you are trying to chain those together in the best way possible. The first card you play down is always free and doesn’t have to connect to anything, but ideally it does so that it’s not a wasted card, but it might be that you need to put it into play in order to combo something onto it later. Because some cards have a symbol that allows you to chain it together as a bonus move, and you can chain multiple of those together and hopefully in the first round take it out. It’s also a puzzle though because various levels of damage changes how the monsters responds to you. So if you’ve done 0-2 damage to them, they might hit you for one damage, but if you’ve done 6 and they need 7 damage they might run away. So, you won’t want to hit 7 damage, but it might be 6 damage on the monster means you get 3 wounds, so that isn’t ideal, so you’re trying to set-up a combo so that you can rush to the finish from 2 damage. I really enjoy the puzzle nature of it, and diplomacy works similar as well, but now you’re trying to move it up using different skills.

Finally the characters, that’s the last thing I want to talk about. I love how different they are. There are six skills and each character has a different set-up of those skills. That means, that Beor, for example, is great a combat at the start, but horrible at dealing with diplomatic encounters. Arev is a more balanced character. Beyond that, each character has their own unique upgrade cards for combat and diplomacy, now if you’ll see them, who knows, but that allows them to feel more thematically developed in terms of characters. I also like that each type of character, there are four archetypes that will be showing up throughout the base game and expansions, has their own combat and diplomacy for that archetype. Finally, each character has something unique that they can do, an action that is unique only to them. In Arev, that’s that he can always find some food, one food for two actions. But to balance that out they have a weakness as well. Arev’s is that he needs one more magic than required to light a Menhir. If a Menhir doesn’t have a requirement for magic, there’s not a requirement for a single magic because of Arev, that offers your own unique challenges for playing each character and adjusts how you can deal with certain encounters for combat and diplomacy or what options you might choose in exploration.

Overall, you can probably tell that I really like the game. Is it a perfect game, no, there is no such thing as a perfect game, my favorite game of all time, Gloomhaven, isn’t a perfect game. But Tainted Grail is an amazing game. I think that it might not work for someone people because it might be too dark in the story, but I think a lot of people are going to love it, and with it shooting up the lists on BGG, it is clearly being enjoyed by those who have it. The story part works so well, and the mechanics are actually quite simple for how large a game it is. Even if someone doesn’t like the story element of it, they can tune that out if other players love it and just hunt down combat and other encounters for their character. This is a really well done game that looks beautiful on the table.

Overall Grade: A+
Gamer Grade: A+
Casual Grade: B+

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