Top 10 Campaign Games I Want to Continue (Or Restart)

Let’s talk about why I stop campaigns sometimes. A lot of the time I do them for the Malts and Meeples YouTube channel. And with that, I like to have a mix of a few games that I’m playing throughout the year. But also, I’ve started some off camera, or I played through a first campaign and I’d love to come back again. But let’s look at what the list looks like. And too often, too, as I play solo, I really wish I had someone in the room with me to share the story.

10. Destinies

Let’s start out Destinies, this is one that I’ve just played the introductory game to it. And I really enjoyed the system. It’s a game that I could play solo, but you don’t get all the story that you’d get multiplayer. So for me, it feels like it should be a multiplayer game. BGG says it’s best at two, but I’d love to try it at three as well and see what player count I like it best at.

But the game is a really simple game when it comes to the system that it uses. And the narrative elements driven by the app work really well. It’s that type of app that supports the game well and doesn’t take away from playing at the table. I do think that Destinies is more of a beer and pretzels campaign than a lot of the other games on the list.

9. Isofarian Guard

Next up we have the Isofarian Guard. This one is meant to be played solo mainly or kind of two player. And I really enjoyed my time playing this game. There is an element of the game that didn’t keep me coming back is the grind. I think that it’s one with the upgrade/update pack for it, it’s going to make it better to play.

That said I like the systems and I like that it’s one big campaign but played with different characters doing different things at the same time. So as I play with one pair of characters the story is going to be continuing elsewhere. And the chip drawing mechanism for combat is a lot of fun as well and makes you think on your feet as you play.

8. Chronicles of Drunagor

I played one session of this one before I packed it up. And I regret that I only played one session. Part of the reason I did is because there is so much to put onto the table. And trying to stream it was a lot of work to set things up in the middle of the game and search for new bad guys and things like that. I know that I need to spend more time sorting it, and once I do that, it would be easier. And I want to play until I reach a door and not set stuff up on stream.

But that said, I really liked the mechanisms in the game. Especially how you activate abilities. You need a cube of the right color to activate an ability, and if you activated it, you block it off with that cube. That means that you lose actions as you go. Then you pull the cubes back, but you block off one of the actions, so the available actions become tighter and I think that makes for a great system.

7. Arkham Horror LCG

This one I could say I kind of have going right now. I am playing through the Scarlet Keys sporadically with a friend. And I really am enjoying this one. I did a play of some of the base campaign on the Malts and Meeples channel. As you can see from the videos that I did with a lot of these. But I find that I like the Arkham Horror LCG a whole lot better at two or more. There feels like more strategy to it and I like planning with other people.

That said, now that I am playing with two, I am loving the game. And the more I play it, the more it flies as I play because I know what I’m doing. It helps to spend some time with this game to get into the rhythm of how turns work and to learn what keywords on the cards mean, especially for monsters.

6. Roll Player Adventures

This is one where I’ve played the whole campaign. So do I want to go back and play it again, kind of. But what I really want to do is play the Gulpax’s Secret expansion that came out of it. It’s just more story and adventure for the game and I am really excited to get it to the table. The story in the first game does a great job of balancing adventure and plot elements in a fun way, not in a way that beats you down with a darker story, like some will coming up.

And I really like the systems in the game. Especially the dice manipulation and spending resources to get dice of various colors. It puts pressure on people playing the game in multiple ways. And it’s fun to be able to sit there and talk about how many resources you should spend, since it’s character life points, versus how many dice you can draw blind. And then once you roll those dice, how do you get them to the right face for either completing a challenge or stopping a threat.

5. Tainted Grail: Kings of Ruin

Another one that I’ve kind of completed the campaign for. I know that the new version of Tainted Grail does change up some things, so it’s a similar setting for the game, but not the same game. And I’m cool with that, though for me, playing the three campaigns of Tainted Grail has been so much fun. I love the story in the game and it’s just a great experience, in my opinion. I think the original campaign is one that I’ll revisit as well. But I want to spend more time in the world, so that’s the biggest reason it’s on the list.

4. ISS Vanguard

Back to back Awaken Realms campaign games with ISS Vanguard. ISS Vanguard is a blast when I played it. And I like the combination of planetary exploration and ship management in the game. Each element felt like it mattered, the reason I stopped this one when I did is that I want to share the story and decision making with more people, in person. Sure I do it online, but unless someone is in the chat and ready to chat, I kind of just make decisions myself.

This game also feels so huge that I really want to share that element with other people as well. Granted, I have two more large sci-fi themed games. This one does give me some other elements to that sci-fi that I like a lot though. Mainly that it’s a crew from Earth. So while it is the best and brightest out there who were sent on this mission, they are still people.

3. 7th Citadel

Not one of the sci-fi campaigns, we have The 7th Citadel. And this game I was having a lot of fun playing. I just needed to keep it set-up to keep up with it. So it’s one that I might revisit anyways at a later time. But it’s also one where I was enjoying the story and experience of the game a lot that I wanted to share it with others, in person.

I really like the challenge system in the game. Whether it’s combat or it’s searching or anything else that you need to do a check for, you are flipping cards. And you need to create stars from those cards. But flipping a lot of cards also means that your deck is running out faster and the only way that you can get cards back is to spend health. It is really just a great balancing act of spending health, but not too much health and spending cards, but not too many cards.

2. Rogue Angels

Now a game that I’ve talked about a long time and that I’ve played with others as well. I have loved this campaign game even though it’s not out. I’ve gotten to play the TTS (TableTop Simulator) module a few times and I have a chapter one prototype that I showed off on the channel. This game just works for me from a fun story that feels epic to great characters and legacy elements to it.

But if it was just that without great mechanisms it’d not be that great. I really like how you play out cards and they go onto a cool down track for actions. Sure, you can always do a basic action, but those aren’t as good. And then, if you get wounded, you start to fill up that track with wound cards, and now you need to rest, or you’re giving cards a bigger cooldown than they should have. It’s just a great puzzle of a system that is easy to play.

1. Stars of Akarios

Finally for my campaign games is a game that I want to share this story and experience with someone in person so badly. It’s just a blast of a game and does so many things in amazing ways that I love. One of the coolest elements is that you get three different experiences throughout the game. There is space exploration, and that is fine. But then you get tactical space combat that is amazing. And you get planetary exploration which is a ton of fun as well. They pack a lot into the game and it works for me.

I could go on about this one a lot. The tactical space combat definitely seems to be the largest part of the game and it’s my favorite. I love how you spend dice to activate abilities. And you need to balance that with repairing your shields, possibly, or dealing with hull damage. Plus you need to line up your big abilities and you need to figure out if you can get into a flanking position to help do more damage. Plus the missions feel different, from fighting two factions to an escort mission and more.

Final Thoughts

Needless to say, between this list and the 15 campaign games that I still need to play, it’s going to keep me busy. I’m also going to go through and probably start of next week do a Top 10 List of Campaign Games that I have Backed that I need to get still. I think I can do a list like that, and yes, that’s too many campaigns to reasonably play. But my hope is to get to most of the campaign games eventually. Does this mean I should stop backing and buying more campaign games, yes. Does it probably mean that I should make more time for them as well, definitely.

Which of these campaign games between the two lists should I play next on stream? I know that I’m doing Gloomhaven right now as a digital campaign. But once I’m done with my Button Shy Solo Games (still a few more weeks of that). I want to get a game set-up on the recessed part of the gaming table and start playing through it. So which one do you think that I should play? I might do a video and ask for people’s opinions on which one I should do.

And do you have a problem with campaign games, mainly buying them, like I do?

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Dungeon Crawler vs Boss Battler vs Adventure Games

Dungeon Crawler

Let’s start out with the defining features of a dungeon crawler. A dungeon crawler is going to be a game where you are making tactical decisions on a map that are directly involving a location of some sort. Another way to put it is kick open a door on a map, fight the monsters that are inside, and repeat.

This is often done in a campaign style of game. Gloomhaven being a prime example of this, you open up a door, a new group of monsters are there for you to fight. And you repeat that through not just each scenario but every battle that you face off against. While killing all the enemies isn’t always the final goal, the general mechanisms of kicking open a door and dealing with what is inside of there on that more tactical map level is how dungeon crawlers work.

Boss Battler

A Boss Battler is going to be much more about a single fight against a single boss. There might be extra trappings around the game. But if it comes down to a character(s) fighting a boss, that is a boss battler.

This one on the Dice Tower I had the least experience with, but also some potential disagreement with on their list. To me, the larger percentage of the game is going to need to be fighting that one boss. Whereas for some, that was the end goal, but not really the largest element.

An example of a Boss Battler is going to be Primal: The Awakening. I am currently painting that game, so I haven’t played it yet. But Meet Me At The Table has some great game plays of it. I’ll drop the first chapter in below. But Primal also demonstrates that it can be a campaign, but it also doesn’t need to be. In the rules for Primal there are ways to set it up as a one off experience. And the new Awaken Realms game, Grimcoven, is also a boss battler, but a single scenario.

Adventure Game

Finally, we have adventure games. These could overlap a lot into the other two. Especially, I think campaign dungeon crawler games. But an adventure game’s focus is going to be more on the adventure element. That is obvious, but I mean that things like combat are not going to be as important. It is going to be about the adventure and story of the game either told by the game or experienced by playing the game.

My example for this one is going to be Roll Player Adventures. There is combat in it, but it isn’t done on a tactical level. You face off against some more boss like monsters, but that isn’t the focus on it. It is all about the story and adventure that provides that you experience in the game. For me, this is the obvious example as to how that is working, but there are a ton of adventure games out there.

Final Thoughts

We’ll see which ones of them I do a Top 5. I realize that even with my love of campaign games, I haven’t played always a ton of boss battler or dungeon crawler games. More dungeon crawler for sure, but a lot of them are adventure type of games. But all of them are styles of games that I really enjoy. Because they all provide more of that epic experience in the game.

And I think I like all of them as well because with that epic experience comes some journey as well. I play a scenario or I battle a boss and there is some story that comes out of it as well. Even if it is just a one off situation, there is going to be something memorable from it. I remember through all the scenarios of Gloomhaven when someone had an amazing turn and was so powerful. Or when we found creative ways to get through scenarios. Or recently in Frosthaven when we just barely defeated scenarios on the last bit of our life.

That, to me, is the great thing that a dungeon crawler, boss battler, or adventure game can bring to the table. Do you prefer one of the types over the other?

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Pros

• Successful Kickstarter Company
• Based off of a good game
• Great demo at GenCon 2019
• Campaign/Story driven game
• Solo play

Cons

• Dice Luckiness

Thoughts On The Page

Great looking page that really lays things out nicely. Polished and professional Kickstarter company that lays things out in a way that I’d expect. A lot of previews of the game on the page which is great, and good levels of pledges.

I really like how they lay out the game play. I think that other Kickstarters could learn from that as game play is huge in a game that isn’t just a mini’s fest. Those often succeed on minis alone, but personally, even with those, I want to see a lot with strong rules, because I’m not buying the minis just to paint. I also like that they didn’t feel the need to make this a minis game. Not every game needs to have minis.

Back or Brick

Now, technically, this is a back for me. However, with that said, I’m not actually backing it. If you like story driven games, I can’t highly recommend this enough, even in a game where we found situations and combinations that potentially got us stuck in the playtesting and play through at GenCon that we did, the game is amazing. There is only one reason that I’m not getting it, that’s because a good friend who I have played through all of Gloomhaven with is getting it, and I know that I can get in on playing his game, or at least I’m assuming I’ll be able to. If you want a lighter story driven game, this game is amazing and very much worth checking out in Kickstarter. If I had the money for it, I’d be getting the $400 bundle because that would get me caught up on everything for the game. But you don’t need to do that, the $400 all in gives you everything and lets you make your own characters for it more easily, but you could do that just getting the base game, which you can find at retail sometimes, and adventures, and you can play just with adventures. If you are on the fence of Roll Player Adventures and no one from your gaming group is getting it, or you game solo, I highly recommend this game.

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Let’s start by talking about some Kickstarters that I will have coming in. I’m counting reprints/second editions with this, so the first one is:

Middara – This game rivals Gloomhaven in terms of size and is bigger in terms of story. There has been so much put into it, and the first kickstarter took forever to fulfill. However, I’m just backing what came out in that Kickstarter so I expect to get mine next year, and projected date places it the middle of next year. In Middara, you are in an anime-esque world and fighting through a massive story with lots of different dungeons and interactions. You make decisions that might change up things in the future, and you upgrade your characters with interesting skills and weapons. This game looks amazing, when I’ll play it, who knows, but I’m excited for it.

Village Attacks – Another reprint, I played it at GenCon last year, got a scenario and a few bits for it, found out that it was impossible to find, but then they kickstarted an expansion for it, which I backed so I could use my GenCon scenario. In this game, it’s tower defense, but you’re the bad guys who are keeping those pesky villagers with their torches and pitchforks from running you at of your house. It’s fully cooperative which I like, and the theme is just a lot of fun. I’m excited for this one to get it back to the table and properly deal with those villagers again. The scenarios are a lot of fun, and depending on what villagers come out when, the game will feel different playing the same scenario.

Dice Throne Adventures – I’ve talked about how much I like Dice Throne. This Yahtzee/King of Tokyo style game where you are fighting a character against another character. You’re part of a massive tournament that the evil emperor has set-up that isn’t at all like Mortal Kombat or anything like that. But in Dice Throne Adventures, you are fighting your way through the evil emperors lands, leveling up your characters, and playing cooperative against the game with whatever characters you want from Season One or Two of Dice Throne. It sounds like a campaign dungeon crawl, and while it does have some of that feel, it’s shorter in terms of campaign so you can get through it and play again without the time commitment like you need for bigger dungeon crawls.

Shadows of Kilforth – I blame Rolling Solo Youtube Channel for getting me into this game, the original, Gloom of Killforth is a one shot adventure game where you are in a world where things are going poorly and you as an adventurer are leveling up, exploring locations, fighting monsters, hoping to get strong enough to be able to take down whatever monster is blighting the land. The original game had a fantasy feel, and while this maintains the fantasy, it also has an eastern feel to it as well, which is cool. This game is also a smaller footprint game as you’re not setting up massive dungeons and needing a million tiles to play it.

Those are ones that I’ve kickstarted already that I’m really excited for. There are two that I know I want to kickstart in 2020, so let’s talk about those.

Frosthaven – Sequel to my #1 game of all time, no brainer I want this. I expect to get it sometime in 2021, but it kickstarts in March of 2020, so I’ll have paid for it then. It builds off of Gloomhaven and the Forgotten Circle expansion to tell you a whole new story set in the same world. But unlike in Gloomhaven where you start out of a set city, in Frosthaven, it adds in some city building and you have to worry about defending the town as well as going out on adventures. The out of the box characters seem a bit more challenging but also seem amazing to play. I’m curious to see how this game differs from Gloomhaven, but I hope it keeps a ton of the same feel.

ISS-Vanguard – A story game from Awaken Realms, sign me up. I have Tainted Grail that I’m dying to play (I’m going to try and play it over my time off around Christmas), but ISS-Vanguard is supposed to be more of an open world sort of game (or open worlds since you’re in space). You can go to different planets in different orders and experience the story that way. The art work that came in the Tainted Grail surprise box is amazing and I really love the style. I’m going to be curious to see how an open world game with a story comes together, but I like the idea of a non-fantasy big story exploration game.

Roll Player Adventure – Now, I don’t like the base game, but I got to play an early prototype of this at GenCon, and this is very different than a game where you’re rolling up your character like Roll Player is. In this, it’s a campaign game, but as compared to some games with campaigns, like from Awaken Realms or Gloomhaven, it isn’t nearly as heavy. The story is a little bit sillier, but the mechanics are fun. Can you manipulate the dice to be able to get through all the story and encounters that you run across. The mechanics were cool, and the game at GenCon, even in an early form, was a ton of fun. Helped that I might have been a power hungry sorcerer.

And, finally, and these aren’t last or least, but there are a few games that are coming out in other ways that I’m definitely interested in. Might just be normal publisher, but also might be kickstarter, I haven’t researched enough.

Deranged – Wait, you’re saying, it doesn’t say 2020, but for it coming to the US, it’s coming in 2020. I played this at GenCon and it was amazing. The game play was smart and simple, the world building of the game was really cool. While it’s not story driven, there is a lot going on, and the card play is really really fun in the game. I like the light horror theming as you’re trying to avoid monsters, get rid of your curses and not become deranged. But it’s very possible that you will or that you’ll die, and then you’ll need to get rid of more curses. It seems like a cooperative game where you’re trying to escape this town with no curses, but it’s competitive, and only one person can escape, so if someone gets too close, time to get kill them and give them another curse. Can someone win in all that fighting, who knows.

Time of Legends: Destinies – I almost kickstarted this game, then I decided I wanted Oathsworn instead. But this one seems really interesting. Each character has secrets that they are trying to solve as well as solve the story that is happening in this game that is set in the same world as Time of Legends: Joan of Arc. But in this one they combined with Lucky Duck games that did Chronicles of Crime, so there’s app integration. And there is a scenario builder that people can use to create more, since out of the box it seemed to come only with a few. For me, I really want to try this one next year, and hopefully if I can make it to GenCon it’ll be there for demoing.

Pandemic Legacy Season 3 – Some of my best gaming experiences have been playing through the first two season. I’m so excited for the 3rd season and last season. I don’t know anything about the game, I just know that I want it and I’m going to be ready to play it the second that I get it. No official release date yet for it, but it sounds like it should be a 2020 release and I’m guessing first half of 2020. That’s about it that I know about it, but it’s an instant buy for me.

There’s so many games coming out and with my proclivity for campaign games, I need to get cracking on the ones that I already have. I need to figure out a more consistent time to play them on Malts and Meeples, but we’ll talk about that in a future article about New Years Nerdsolutions.

What games are you looking forward to, is there a game coming out or to kickstarter that you just need to play?

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