Catch up on previous videos here

100 through 91
90 through 81

Top 100 Games (of all time) 2024 Edition – 80 through 71

80. Flamecraft

• Published by Cardboard Alchemy in 2022
• Deliver on the most goals and score points as you play out adorable little dragons who help around the town

This game immediately grabs you with the artwork. The dragons are amazing, and Sandara Tang gives each of them such great personality. Beyond that the game is simple but fun, you go to a location and are either activating the cards and dragons there, or adding some, or spending resources to complete goals. As the locations get more and more dragons the more powerful they become. It’s a great ramping mechanism for a simple game. Though the game is not fast one, which might be my only knock on it.

Buy Flamecraft

79. Just One

• Published by Repos Productions in 2018
• Work together to get the guesser to the right answer with just one word

A party game on this section. I’m not sure, I expect that there are two more party games on the list, but we’ll see. I honestly have forgotten. But Just One is a great cooperative party game. One person is the guesser and everyone else needs to write down a one word clue to get the guesser to guess their one word. Sounds simple, right, but if you double up with anyone, now both those words are gone. That means that an easy clue can become very hard very fast. So you want to be obscure with your clue, but not so obscure that it won’t lead the person to the right answer.

Buy Just One

78. On Tour

• Published by BoardGameTables.com (AllPlay) in 2019
• Create the best route for your band to tour the map going from low to high numbers

This one is a fun roll and write. While I love a ton of roll and write games where they have a lot of combos, this one is a different type of puzzle. In On Tour two dice are rolled and players each place the numerical combinations on two spots on their board. But there are rules as to where they can go. And you may want to watch the city to gain bonus points, but if it won’t connect well to your route, is it worth it to push your luck?

Buy On Tour

77. Mythwind

• Published by Open Owl Studios in 2023
• Build up your settlement and play your mini game in this cozy gaming experience

Open Owl Studios went into making Mythwind with the plan of making a cozy game. So something that works well like a Stardew Valley or an Animal Crossing. They do that by creating a peaceful story world to play in, there are interesting elements to it though. And then each person plays their own little minigame. I demonstrate what the minigame for the farmer looks like. And One Stop Co-op Shop and Meet Me At The Table play some of the other ones. It’s just a unique feeling game that is fun, and relaxing to play.

Preorder Mythwind

76. Betrayal at House on the Hill

• Published by Avalon Hill in 2004
• Explore a haunted house but beware, someone is going to be come the traitor

This is a game that I still love though I haven’t played it in a few years. I fully recognize that the game has issues. When you sit down to play you know that the haunt may not work as planned because either the traitor is going to be overpowered or the other survivors will be. And the haunts themselves have janky rules. But I still love the game anyways because it’s thematic, silly, and just a fun time.

Buy Betrayal at House on the Hill 3rd Edition

75. Clever 4Ever

• Published by Schmidt Spiele in 2022
• Another combotastic game in the Clever line of roll and writes

I don’t know what else to say about this one. Clever 4Ever offers a ton of fun combos and a few different feeling sections of your sheet. How Wolfgang Warsch keeps on coming up with different and interesting ways to handle rolling five dice, using one, getting rid of lower ones and then rolling them again, I don’t know. But he does and this one is great, I especially like the sections where you can fill in different shapes depending on the number rolled. That element really feels different.

Clever 4Ever is either new to my Top 100 Games (of all time) this year or it just made the cut last year. I know I hadn’t had the game for long.

Buy Clever 4Ever

74. SpellBook

• Published by Space Cowboys in 2023
• Learn spells and feed your familiar to get the most points

This is a really simple game. All it is when you boil it down is set collection. You collect materia, you get enough of a color, you learn that spell. Then you use that spell you learned to collect more materia or learn new spells easier. Each spell you learn gives you points, or you can just feed the materia to your familiar for more points as well. The is fast, and there is a fun puzzle as to how you can optimize your spell usage as you get into the game.

Buy SpellBook

73. Century: Golem Edition

• Published by Plan B Games in 2017
• Get crystals, upgrade crystals and get golems to give you points

Another engine building game. Century: Golem Edition again, like SpellBook, has quick snappy turns. In this game it’s all about hand management and using those cards in hand to get more and upgrade crystals. Then you use those crystals to grab Golems that are going to score you points. But you literally just play a card, trade crystals for a golem, pick-up all your cards, or buy a new card. One of those things on a turn and the game just flies.

Buy Century: Golem Edition

72. New Frontiers

• Published by Rio Grande Games in 2018
• Build out the grandest space empire by doing the best action for you

New Frontiers is another engine building game. In New Frontiers you are doing it at a space level though, colonizing new planets, getting new technologies, fighting and conquering planets. All of that done through action selection where what action you pick gives you a bonus. But, everyone else is going to follow along with that action as well. So what is the best action for you and maybe not a great one for other players? I believe that New Frontiers is new to my Top 100 Games (of all time) as well though it isn’t a new game.

Buy New Frontiers

71. Meadow

• Published by Rebel Studio in 2021
• Create a beautiful tableau of nature through tricky card drafting

Meadow is another gorgeous game. I start out and end this section with beautiful games. In Meadow you want to score points by playing out creatures, taking pictures, and gaining trinkets. But to do that you need to build up your meadow from the land type up through bugs and maybe eventually all the way into deer, foxes, or other creatures. How you pick the cards you get is great. You use a fence post that tells you how far into a row or column you are picking. So you need to determine the best spots to play to get all the cards that you want and hope no one blocks you.

Buy Meadow

Final Thoughts

Firstly, let me know what your favorite of these games are. I obviously enjoy all of the tones in my Top 100 Games (of all time) 2024 Edition, so Meadow needs to be my favorite. But in terms of easily getting it to the table, I’m kind of feeling a big old stream and playthrough of all the clever games on Malts and Meeples. And let me know if there is one that you would want to get played as well that you haven’t tried in my Top 100 Games (of all time) 2024 Edition.

Join me next week for the next batch of games in my Top 100 Games. It’ll be starting around 9 PM Central on Wednesday if everything goes as planned. You can subscribe and click the notification bell to get notified when the video goes live. Thanks so much for watching.

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Next 5 Best Board Games of 2023

10. Ecosystem: Savana

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

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

9. Black Hole Buccaneers

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

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

8. Cursed!?

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

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

7. Skytear Horde

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

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

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

6. SpellBook

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

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

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

Final Thoughts

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

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

What were some of your favorites board games from 2023?

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Catch up on my Top 100 Games (of all Time) 2023 Edition:

100 through 91

90 through 81

80 through 71

Top 100 Games (of all time) 2023 Edition – 70 through 61

70. Medium

I suspect that I am reaching the end of where I have placed party games. But there are a lot of good party games on the list up to this point, and Medium is one of my favorites. Medium is a simple word but it offers some good laughs, it offers chances to feel clever, and it’s an easy one for everyone to play.

In Medium you and your partner, for that turn, each play out a card with a word on it. And then, at the same time you try and come up with a word that connects the two. So if the words were “duck” and “goose” options like “bird” or “fowl” would make sense. If you don’t match the first time, then you try again with the new words that you said. And the faster you match, if you do at all, the more points that you get. You get three rounds to match.

This is a game where when it isn’t your turn, 75% of the time you immediately have the “perfect” word pop into your head. As soon as it is your turn, you’re hoping that if you play down “goose” your partner for the round doesn’t play down “taco” and when they do, your mind goes blank. It’s as fun to play in a round as to watch.

Buy Medium

69. Under Falling Skies

Under Falling Skies is the first of a few games that can be played solo and the only true solo game on the list. I think I said two, but it’s the one true solo. Under Falling Skies is a combination of Space Invaders with alien ships coming down and Independence Day of trying to take out the other mothership. All of this before the mothership comes to Earth and it is too late.

I like how simple this game is, but also how complex it is. What you try and do each turn is pretty simple. You are placing dice to slow down an enemies ships descent, gather more power, blow ships out of the sky, build out your bunkers, and research how to stop the mother ship. That is a lot, but it is all just dice placement. You place dice down and that determines how strong your plane is to blow up alien ships. Or you place a die down to add power so you can actually send out that ship.

But the game has a great twist on it. You want high numbers to make your actions better, but by doing so it makes the enemy ships come down faster. If the little ships reach Earth, then the mothership starts to come down faster, I believe. Or it is getting another end game trigger. So you need to be strategic in what you are doing, like a good cooperative game, to fend off your impending doom.

Buy Under Falling Skies

68. Blank Slate

Another party game for the list, Blank Slate is a newer one to me, though was on the list last year, and one that just always works. A good party game should always work, and it should be simple to sit down and start playing within a couple of minutes.

In Blank Slate you are filling in a blank around another word. It might be “truck [blank]” and you need to fill in that second word. Your goal is to match with one other person. Because, if you watch with one other person only, you get three points each, but if you match with more, each of you get one point. And if you don’t match with anyone, you don’t get any points. And that is the game, it’s the first to twenty I believe, and it moves fast.

So it is about being creative but not too creative. I like party games like that because, like I said, anyone can play them. And Blank Slate might not have as many “haha” moments, but it has some fun game moments that party games which are just there for laughs often don’t have.

Buy Blank Slate

67. The Quacks of Quedlinburg

Now we’re on to The Quacks of Quedlinburg, a push your luck bag building game. And this is one that has a number of things going for it as well. It’s not a party game, but it’s pretty simple. With it being pretty simple, brew your quack potion each round and try not to bust, there is strategy to it. Each ingredient that you get has a power to it that may or may not trigger depending on its condition.

So, the powers are one fun element. I also like that Quacks of Quedlinburg adds in more to the game to balance that push your luck. If you bust, you aren’t out in the cold with nothing to show for it. You get to pick either purchasing new ingredients or scoring points. New ingredients means that it’s harder to bust, theoretically, depends on how much you push your luck. But you get behind in points you need to catch up.

And I didn’t mention this on the video, but there is a catch-up mechanism in the game. The further you are behind the leader the more of a boost you get to start the next round of brewing your potion. It isn’t a massive catch-up mechanism, but it helps you get back into the game, and when you do, it goes away. A nice little piece to the game to make it more fun.

Buy Quacks of Quedlinburg

66. Pandemic Legacy Season One (and all Version)

Now the first game that is just a group of games, this is Pandemic. I put Pandemic Legacy Season One up as the picture because that’s been my favorite experience. If you’re not familiar with Pandemic, it’s a game about trying to control diseases until you can find a cure. If you can get the cure for all four diseases the players win, run out of cards, have too many epidemics, or run out of disease cubes, you lose.

The legacy version adds in some story and a campaign that you play through. That story adds just a enough new things from new objectives to new rules and components to make it a really fun time. Though, I don’t know that you can really go wrong with any version of Pandemic. The base game is a lot of fun as well, for me, I don’t know that I need to play vanilla Pandemic again because of Pandemic Legacy. And Pandemic Legacy, the story, is replayable with a new copy and as fun the next time.

Plus now they have World of Warcraft game in the system and a Star Wars version, so if they keep on doing that, soon there will be a version of Pandemic for everyone.

Buy Pandemic Legacy Season One

65. Skytear Horde

This is the other game that I accidentally called a solo game. And I do think I would lean towards playing it solo. Skytear Horde is a tower defense, lane battler game where you are trying to take out the horde and their leader before they can wipe out your base.

I really like the different factions you can have to play as. I also like that the hordes come in different power levels so I might go for a harder challenge or a harder combination sometime. So the game really does scale to the level of difficulty that you want to play at. And it also means that it won’t get stale.

For me, I do think it’s a better solo game. I look at it, and I want to control what is going on. Because while it does scale, the game is not that difficult to learn your faction and play them. Even playing two isn’t the hardest thing out there. So I look at it, and I think, might as well just play it solo and have more of the decision making on my shoulders versus spread out across the group.

Buy Skytear Horde

64. Marvel United

Marvel United is a really fast and fun superhero game. And that combination is what puts it this high on the list. You can grab a character to play as and a bad guy to play against and be ready to play in a few minutes. There aren’t that many games that you can do that with. Add in that I have about 200 different characters, slightly over, between heroes, anti-heroes, and villains to pick from, that is even more impressive.

The game play is quite simple. You try and beat up thugs, take down henchmen or schemes, and rescue bystanders. When you complete two of those three things, you can start beating up the bad guy. Of course, who the bad guy is might change up what you need to do, and the heroes you take in change up what you can do.

I also like a lot how the heroes work. Not that the heroes are always that unique, they get more unique with the X-Men expansion, but how they promote teamwork. What you play down for your actions is boosted by what the player before you played down. So maybe they take a less optimal turn to set you up for a great turn of beating down on the bad guy. I think that works super well in the game and is a ton of fun. It also feels so much like being super heroes or the comics which is great.

Buy Marvel United X-Men

63. Lords of Hellas

From a very simple game to a complex one and honestly one that is a bit messy. But that is some of what makes Lords of Hellas so good. In Lords of Hellas you can win in four different ways (possibly five if I’m forgetting one). You can control a certain number of temples, areas, or a statue after it’s been built, or you can defeat three monsters. And all of them are viable ways to win. But because of that, it adds complexity to the game design.

Then, not shying away from that, Awaken Realms put in a pretty simple but action selection. Mainly, you can’t repeat actions and need to clear them off to be able to do them again. But to add to that, the character you start as, your leader, has a special power. As temples are built, drafts are done for new and more special powers. It’s just a lot of special powers and great time, but, obviously, that makes it more complex as you play. But that doesn’t keep the game from being a blast.

Sold Out

62. SpellBook

A new game to the list, we now are back to a much more simple game. This is a game about set collecting spell ingredients to learn spells and add them to your spellbook. Then you use those spells to improve your future turns and either get more materials to feed your familiar or learn more spells.

This game has a good progression and good decision space for a pretty simple game. How you learn spells and chain them together is an interesting puzzle. You can only learn each spell once and they have certain points on them. So do you wait for better points, or do you grab one or two early that will help you do better on spells later. And the game ends when someone has cast all their spells, or when someone has fully fed their familiar. And both options work to win, which I appreciate as well.

This is a game that won’t be for everyone. And I think if it just had one set of spell cards, it’d end up being pretty standard. But the different combinations offer room for expansion but also offer room in the base box for different games and different experiences as you play.

Buy SpellBook

61. Draftosaurus

Finally we have Draftosaurus. This is the closest to a roll and write game on the list. That is what it feels like to me. And it’s a light and fast game that is just a fun time. In this game you are drafting dinosaur meeples and putting them into pens to build the best dinosaur attraction out there. The game is super simple with pens having simple scoring rules. But that is what makes the game fun, grab your dinosaur and go.

And the pens are all different. So some of them you want to get all matching dinosaurs, some you want all different and some you want pairs. The not so twisty twist for the game is that you are limited to where you can place them. A die is rolled and what determines where, unless you were the person to roll the die and then you can play anywhere. It just adds a little bit of strategy and random structure to the game without slowing it down. So a light fun, filler of a game.

Buy Draftosaurus

Upcoming Streams

Let’s run through the stream structure like I normally do. You might already know the schedule but in case you don’t. Wednesday at 8 PM Central I stream either a campaign game, or with this time of year it’s my Top 100 Games (of all time) 2023 Edition. And join me next Wednesday for games 60 through 51, so hitting the half way point. It goes so fast, and now I have so many games that I want to play.

Then on Monday I stream at 9 PM Central time. It’s generally a solo game. Though I’ll also do pack openings for things, like I should have a Lord of the Rings Collectors box coming for the new cards. But normally it’s a solo game and a one off for the game like a roll and write, or sometimes a game like Under Falling Skies which was on the list today.

But the best way, 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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Part of what I do at Gen Con every evening, though, is go through a list of everything that I played. I log those plays and see how many games I played. This year, over Gen Con, I believe it was 42 or 43 different games. So let’s look at the games played, ranked, but we’re starting out only with day 1’s recap of gaming so far because 42 is too many for a single article.

Day 1 Gaming at Gen Con

13. Invincible: The Dice Game

I know that Tom Vasel of the Dice Tower did not like this game. I’m with him a bit on it. I think it’s a perfectly fine beer and pretzels type of game. But I already have a game, Zombie Dice, that does the same thing, and I think it does it better.

It’s a dice chucker where you allocate dice and push your luck to try and beat bad guys. The bad guys give you damage and they can knock down your “health” to take you out of a round if you push your luck too far. One of those, there isn’t too much to the game sort of games. It’s one I’d play again, but I don’t need two games like that in my collection.

12. Beacon Patrol

This one I accidentally slept through the event for the following day, but Beacon Patrol with the demo I got was simply fine. It has that Carcassonne style placement of tiles. It turns it into a cooperative game, but without that much game to it. I also think that it bogs down because if you get bad tiles, as a group, you might not be able to place them. They give you minor ways to deal with it, but it’s not that exciting.

And the scoring is pretty simple, surround a tile on all four sides. It gives points depending on what’s on it, but there’s just not that much going on, which is why it’s lower on my list. I feel like over a longer game it wouldn’t be any more interesting than a few round demo, it might make it worse.

11. Scram!

This is team Silver. I like Silver, but I sold my stuff. It’s a game that I played a number of times, so I don’t feel the need to come back to it again. Scram! Is simpler, but it’s for teams. I think I like it better than Silver just because of that simplicity, the weird animal theme, and the teamwork. The change is that you can play and get rid of a card of your teammates as well when you get rid of cards of the same number. Very much the same thing, but still enjoyable. Not one that I’m going to get back in this form, most likely, as it’d be harder to play.

10. GAP

I did buy this one and it’s fairly low on my list. I got it because it’s a small game and one that is pretty simple and fun. You just play out card and take cards of the matching numbers or an adjacent number. And you are trying to collect a lot of one color and a little of another color so that you get the biggest gap, hence the name. I like a little card game like this one, and it reminds me of some other ones, a bit like Hats a bit like Parade. I’m not sure it’s better than either of those, but it’s easier to teach, which I like as well.

9. Secrets of the Lost Tomb: Epic Edition

This demo was pretty light, which is a shame. I think sitting down with this game for 30 minutes or so would have been great. But this is basically a cooperative Betrayal at House on the Hill. It is a remake and reworking of an older game. I like that in theory, it’s more of an adventure and it’s one shot adventures. So it is a bit more text than Betrayal and a bit more story because of that. However, it feels a bit old in what it’s doing, do I need a second game like Betrayal?

8. Cytosis: A Cell Biology Board Game

A game that’s been out for a bit, this is one of those games that I just sat down to randomly play. And I think it’s a solid worker placement game. You need to plan out what you do well, but it doesn’t feel that exciting compared to other games.

I think I mainly compare it to Asking for Trobils, that weight of game, and Asking for Trobils is more fun. Cytosis is a great game, though, if you want an interesting way to teach Cytosis and that science because it does a great job of that. There is great value in that, in my opinion, because it’s a fun game that teaches you.

7. Age of Wonders: Planetfall

I have two things that I think are interesting about this game. Age of Wonders: Planetfall is a game about building out your factions powers to get the most points as you spend resources, get resources, fight battles, get cards.

I think that it’s a very cool game, I have it low on the list because I don’t think there is enough. It’s 7 planets you go to per game, but it’s the same seven planets. And it needs to be because cards build like they do in 7 Wonders where you have a card that is easy to get if you own a previous card. But the variability I feel like is pretty light. So I think I want it, but I’d play it 5-6 times and then be done with it.

6. The Fox Experiment

A game that’s been out for a few years. I don’t think I realized fully how it worked, now that I do, I really want the game. This is a game about Russian experiments for breeding foxes, kind of that actually happened.

You breed foxes and get new trait based off of roll and write mechanisms. And then those new foxes are placed into the breeding pool so you build out the ones that you already did. It’s a fun system, it’s not a heavy game, but I want it. I like the roll and write random element to it. I like the upgrades and things you can do to improve your fox, so very fun.

5. Ecosystem

This is one that was a surprise hit for me. The game is a pretty simple tableau building drafting game. You draft animals that score in different ways. The bear wants to be near rabbits and trout. The trout the streams and dragonflies, the foxes don’t want to be near other predators. All of those things give you points and you draft over two rounds. The upside is it can play a pretty solid number of players and it plays fast. I picked it up because it’s going to be one of those games, I can tell, that is going to be consistently played with my group, that easy to play but offers some good fun.

4. SpellBook

SpellBook is one of the bigger releases, I think, at Gen Con because of the designer. Phil Walker-Harding is known for creating lighter, easy to play games that are very popular. And I think that SpellBook hits that as well. You are trying to cast spells and give energy to your familiar. All of those things give you points and the spells give you power.

But you can only cast spells once per games of the various colors. So as you cast them, you need to decide to what level you want to push them to. The higher the go, they better they are, but the game ends when you’ve cast them all, or when your familiar is maxed out, so someone can rush those ends if they want, it’s a fun balancing act.

3. Dungeon Karts

This one is great, it’s a multiplayer racing game that is very much a Mario Kart style of game. The game play is fast and pretty straight forward in what you are doing. There are special powers, and you get spells that you cast against your opponents. This reminds me a bit of Tiny Turbo Cars but without the real time, more just that fun that you have in a game where you can blow someone else up. It definitely leans into the goofy and will be coming to Kickstarter soon which I’ll want to checkout.

2. Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West

This one is hard to rank, but it ranked high. Mainly, what I saw I liked a lot. But what I saw was mainly Ticket to Ride. When you start this legacy game you only play on the East Coast and the density of locations is a whole lot higher. There are elements that give you a bonus in the game. And what I saw that is mainly new is that you get events. Those events might give you  more victory points or potentially bad things. I’m really excited for this legacy game to come out.

1. Lost Ruins of Arnak: The Missing Expedition

I already like Arnak a lot already. The Missing Expedition expansion adds in a few things. There are two new research boards, we didn’t play with those. Two new characters I thought that both of them were very interesting. The big thing is I got to play the campaign in the box. This is a solo or two player campaign where you unlock new cards as you go along. And there is a story with it, more than I thought, which is cool. I wasn’t sure if it would work cooperatively, but it does. And there are good challenges in it and twists in the first chapter. I bought it, so I will play through the whole campaign, probably solo.

Busy with Gaming

I play a lot of games at Gen Con. And Thursday is often the busiest day for me, like I said. And I think that it might have been the best day for gaming for me. Even my least favorite game in the group, I think was fun enough to play again. It’s a good “beer and pretzels” game.

If you’re not familiar with that term, think of a game that you can sit around playing at a bar or brewery. Or at your place when you want something to play, but it’s mainly about chatting, sitting around, and drinking. Actually a very good option for a place like Gen Con.

Then the list goes all the way up to bigger more complex games that are great. I’m not sure that The Missing Expedition is as good as Expedition Leaders for Lost Ruins of Arnak. But it adds in more cards and more expedition leaders even if you don’t want the cooperative campaign. So even if you do end up playing without the campaign you get good stuff in the box.

It’s been just over a week and I miss the gaming all the time already. Gen Con is great for that, and thankfully, I get a game night tomorrow night where we’ll play some of the these games that I bought at Gen Con. Often some that I did demo as well.

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Top 10 Games to Demo at Gen Con

Let’s start out by cheating with two honorable mentions.

Honorable Mention:

Kinfire Delve – Kinfire is a game that I might pick up, it’s a big campaign game. Delve looks like a smaller game set in the same universe. But if it builds on that world in a fun away, even without being a campaign game, it is one that’s on my radar. And it’s still cooperative, so it might be more of a bite sized game.

The A.R.T. Project – Another cooperative game and another one that looks beautiful. I obviously like cooperative games, and I’m hoping that this one won’t be too complex. The idea of trying to figure out certain scenarios to stop an art thief, but again not be a campaign game, that sounds like a lot of fun. And with the look of the game, not a company I’m always drawn towards, but this game is.

Onto the main list.

10. Super Squad High

Let’s start out with the most important thing. There is a narrative dating mechanism. This is a high school for super heroes, of course there is going to be that. Plus it’s cooperative and it’s super heroes, and honestly, I don’t know what’s in this game not to love. Maybe the fact that secretly one of your classmates if the villains. But it doesn’t sound like a hidden traitor game, it sounds like one of the people you interact with through the game will be. So I hope I don’t end up dating them.

9. Spellbook

Phil Walker-Harding puts out good balances of interesting games, but not too complex games. This is fun that they are advertising there are 2100 different spell combinations. That means that the game is going to be and feel unique. And those spells are going to be unique and changing as the game goes on. Plus the whole main concept, feeding your familiar with the “materia” from the spells, that is interesting. Finally, you decide when you spit out those spells. Get an affect now, or you hold onto your spell and launch it later with more power.

8. Reign of Hades

Exploration, fighting monsters, dealing with whatever adventure is thrown at you? The only question is, why is this one not higher on the list for me? Honestly, it probably should be. It’s of course cooperative and hand management. I hope that it’ll be one that stands out as  unique and not too big, but one that I’m curious about as it’s a style of game I love.

7. Charcuterie

Build the best charcuteries board, that sounds fun. I do love a good charcuterie board. The downside I will want to eat charcuterie while playing Charcuterie. From the game side of things, it uses one of my favorite mechanisms. That being I split you choose, so I might want olives, but how do I make it so I give you something good enough that you’ll take it and leave me my olives? But I don’t want it to be too good so I make it harder on myself later on.

6. Diced Veggies

While I prefer charcuterie, this game also looks interesting and it looks simple. Honestly, this is one I’d have over looked except that the YouTube channel Thinker Themer were in on it. And I like what it looks like, you are cutting dice off of a big block of dice. Always need to cut at the edge and no more than 10 pips worth. So can you setup some good cuts so you get great turns and don’t leave anything great. All the while using those dice to fulfill cards for points. Simple, but sounds like a fun time.

5. Defenders of the Dictionary

Cooperative word game, like I said, I like cooperative games. And this one sounds very interesting. You are working together against some force in the game that is trying to stop you. And you do that by building words and working with each other. They do a good job of making it sound really fun, and if it’s a strong word game then I’m very curious. It also talks about it being grid based, so I’m not sure if you’re building up words or not? I think that just sounds unique.

4. Weirdwood Manor

This game sounds really interesting because it’s a horror themed game. But not just a horror themed game, one with a haunted or weird house. And the house, from what I can tell, rotates, so how it’s setup at the start of the game might not be how it ends. Maybe should be lower on the list, but I like a cooperative game, and when you have a weird horror theme, that makes me quite interested.

3. Horror on the Orient Express

Have I said that I like horror. And then there is a whole lot more. It’s a cooperative game. There is story and adventure to it, you need to deal with cultists and really a lot of the standard Lovecraftian things. But that doesn’t stop me from wanting to play it. I like the them, I like the setting. And if it can have story and depth to the game, not just a simple dice chucker, I am excited to see what it can offer.

2. Ticket to Ride: Legacy

A legacy game, I love legacy games. Ticket to Ride, my favorite gateway game. What do I think this is going to offer, I’m not even sure. And what can you demo on it, I’m definitely  not sure. But I love the idea of it and I like the idea of it for being that gateway plus game. Kind of like Pandemic Legacy let me play Pandemic again and feel like there was more without being too much. I hope that Ticket to Ride Legacy falls in line with those.

1. Star Wars: Unlimited

This one no shock that it’s on my list. It’s a competitive trading card game. But it’s Star Wars themed, I really like Star Wars. And there is a collectible aspect and deck construction. But I like how they are doing a few things. Firstly, “rare” cards are less rare than you’d think to keep the game accessible. But alt art cards, or foil, those are going to be the chase cards in the set. And I like the deck building because you are battling on different fronts. So you might build a deck that is very focused on attacking and defending on the ground in hopes to overwhelm your opponent. Of course, that means that you are weaker in space, so there is going to be a lot of interesting strategy and deck theory crafting that I hope to dive into.

What Is Your Must Demo Game?

Let me know what game or games that I might be missing on my list. There are so many games, even more than I put up on video, which you can find below. But which ones stand out to you as games that you’d like to get demoed when you go, or ones you think should be on my radar?

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