Top 5 Epic Sci-Fi Board Games

5. Battlestar Galactica

Let’s start out with a different type of one. Battlestar Galactica (BSG) is a hidden traitor game. But it is built into an epic package where the humans are trying to evade the Cylons (robots) who have attacked. They leap from place to place and take actions around the ship to drive off the Cylons that seem to be one step ahead, in that they can always catch back up.

But throughout the game, it happens twice, players are given hidden roles. You might start out thinking you are a human and then half way through become a Cylon. And you are guaranteed that half way through the game, players might become Cylons, but at the start you might have none. And you still won’t trust the other players because they might be a Cylon.

4. Star Wars Rebellion

Star Wars Rebellion is called Star Wars in a box and rightfully so. This is a cat and mouse game of the rebellion trying to gain enough support and take enough subversive actions to take down the empire. The empire is playing a game of hide and seek with the rebel base so they can destroy it taking care of those pesky rebels once and for all.

It’s truly a galaxy big game that feels like Star Wars. Your story might be a little different but it takes from the original trilogy and lets you play it out your own way. Does the empire capture Han Solo instead of Leia? Will Kashyyyk get blown up by the Death Star? You control that story as you play through the game.

3. ISS Vanguard

This one is more of that space grand adventure. And you can watch some of the game over on Malts and Meeples YouTube Channel. I’ll have the first video down below. But ISS Vanguard is about what’s out there in deep space.

Humanity has decoded a secret message buried deep in our DNA. It was coordinates for a galaxy that was cloaked. Hidden far away from Earth, humanity works together to find those coordinates. When you get there, it’s a dying galaxy, and you need to figure out what happened and why you were sent there. You do that by exploring planets. But at the same time you need to maintain and improve your ship so that you can properly deal with the challenges to come and explore everywhere.

2. Clank! In! Space!

Now back to a smaller game, Clank! In! Space! is a deck building game and push your luck. You are thieves breaking into the ship of Lord Eradikus. He has a lot of treasures, but he certainly doesn’t want you stealing them. So while you are racing in to steal them you make noise that will tip him off. And when you tip him off and he activates, he draws cubes from a bag. Those cubes might be his color, which nothing happens, or it might be dealing damage to you.

This game offers that epic feel as you try and figure out how noisy you want to be, noisy cards are better but the more likely Eradikus will draw your cubes and knock you out. But also with being how noisy, how far do you want to push into his chambers to get the best treasure. A close treasure is worth fewer points. But the longer you are in the ship, the more chance for clank and noise to happen.

1. Stars of Akarios

Finally, we have Stars of Akarios. This is another one that I played in Malts and Meeples. And you can watch the first mission of that below. But this is another big box space game. And it’s an interesting one because it is split into three parts. There is tactical ship combat, there is space exploration, and there is planetary exploration.

The big thing you do most of the time is the tactical space combat. That is a a puzzle of using dice to position your ship so that you can flank the enemy and hit for more damage or are more likely to hit. While trying to keep them from being able to do that to you so that you can survive. And how and when to best utilize some things that don’t have unlimited uses for their best effect.

Space exploration is simply moving from space location card to location card. You come across points of interest, and you maybe can interact with them. It’s not a major part of the game. But the planetary exploration is an interesting puzzle as your characters are spending energy to find new missions and new bits of story to interact with on a growing planetary board as you explore around.

Final Thoughts on Epic Sci-Fi

I know that I’m missing one game that would likely make the list. I need to play Nemesis still because I think that could be another amazing experience for this list. It offers the Alien movies in a box, which is great sounding. Or SHEOL I think is sci-fi in nature as well.

But there are a lot of good epic space games out there. Games that I’ve owned that I didn’t mention would be things like Star Wars: Imperial Assault. It offers a good Star Wars story adjacent to the original trilogy, at least out of the box. It’s down on the map versus bigger space picture like Rebellion. Or I thought of a silly game like Galaxy Trucker. It’s space trucking and hoping your ship doesn’t blow up. But it’s a fun time that can lead to great stories as your ship will blow up.

What are your favorite epic sci-fi board games?

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Two Player Games Rankings

Before I get started, there are a few that are good at a lot of player counts. But I think a lot of people will prefer them at two, or they offer a different experience at two, so I’ll call out those on the list.

14. Star Wars: Destiny

Bottom of the list just because I had this game, I started to kind of get into it, but it’s a TCG style game. Trading card games are harder to play just because you need someone else who is into it. I recently sold my cards to a friend because, well, I wasn’t going to play it again. The game is fun, I don’t think it’s better than Magic, which isn’t on my list because I prefer it as a free for all. And like Magic, it’s harder to find time to play it.

13. Blossoms

Blossoms is a push your luck game with some choices. It really, though comes down to push your luck as you are growing plants. How far do you want to push, or will you bust. Game play is very simple, decision space is very limited. But it’s not a bad game. If you want a two player game you could play with anyone, Blossoms works for that.

12. Cribbage

Now Cribbage, I really like this game. The concept is simple but the game play is good and there is strategy to what you play. I’m not great at cribbage, but I have a nice board that I need to use sometime soon. The game plays fast, and this is really one of those great bar or brewery games where you don’t need much, and it’s a nice game to play.

11. Skulk Hollow

Might be higher on the list if I played Skulk Hollow more often. It’s a game where both sides play similarly but differently. Each side has their own objectives as to what they want to do, the Foxen want to take down the guardian, and the guardian might want to take out enough Foxen or maybe put out their tentacles, it depends on the guardian. Nice asymmetrical game with a cool two board system.

10. Claim

Two player trick taking, shouldn’t be the only trick taking on the list, but I haven’t played Fox in the Forest or Fox in the Forest Duet yet. I want to, and I have both on my shelf. But Claim is a very interesting game. You play a hand to build your next hand. And then you play to gain majority in the five different suits. But different suits have different powers. Fun puzzle of a game that you can play a few games in a sitting.

9. The Dresden Files Cooperative Card Game

I think I’ve played this game at all player counts. Solo isn’t bad, and three isn’t bad, but I like The Dresden Files Cooperative Card Game best at two. Why, because there’s little downtime between turns. And also because I know one person who I regularly game with who is as deep, if not deeper, into the Dresden series than I am. So it’s fun to bring that theme to a game that has it pasted onto mechanics in a good way.

8. Star Wars: Rebellion

Star Wars: Rebellion almost missed being put on the list. This is a two player only Original Trilogy Star Wars in a box. You can play with four, but it just splits up everything into two, and there’s not that much to keep track of. The game is a lot of fun because the Empire is trying to track down the Rebel base, and the Rebels are trying to undermine the Empire. I don’t even mind the dice combat in the game. Big box, takes a while to play, but great.

7. Hats

Hats is one of those abstract games that can play more, but it’s so much better at two. It’s about playing cards from your hand down to the table, the Madd Hatter’s table, to collect other hats. So it’s interesting because what you have in your hand won’t be the cards you use to score at the end of the game. It is fine at four, but at two, there is a whole lot more tension in what you do.

6. Ohanami

Ohanami is almost two different games at the different player counts. When you play with three or four, you take what is best for you because you won’t see the hands again too much. At two, you are going to see your starting hand three times. So you get six of the ten cards in it. Now in two players you think about what you want and your opponent might want, take the ones that overlap first, before taking ones that just you might want.

5. Hanamikoji

Two player only game, Hanamikoji is amazing. And really the top six are games I’d always play, and even Hats is one I’d play but only if it’s two player. Hanamikoji has you vying to win favor of Geisha. Either by getting 11 points or the favor of four of the seven Geisha. The game play is amazingly tense as you try and puzzle out what you opponent might have. And the four actions you take all feel like tough decisions.

4. Super Fantasy Brawl

Super Fantasy Brawl I believe can be played with more, but it’s best as a two player head to head skirmish game. This game is about punching your opponents to knock them out, but also completing objectives. I don’t think you can easily win without doing both. Because you worry about only objectives, your opponent will take you out and ruin your plans. Only about taking your opponent out, they’ll be able to maneuver to get objectives.

Plus, the game play is extremely simple. You have three different color actions you can take per round. That corresponds to colors of cards, so you play cards of that color. You have some defensive ones you can use, but if you use those, on your turn you can’t then play that color to take a more offensive action. And there are a lot of characters and I still want more.

3. Marvel Champions: The Card Game

Marvel Champions is a very nice solo game, but I think I prefer it as a two player game. More I wouldn’t want to play with because of downtime. But at two player, it feels like it offers a different depth of strategy and teamwork that you don’t get in solo. And it’s fun to take two super heroes up against a villain and have that team-up feel.

2. Aeon’s End

Aeon’s End is another one where I really like it as a two player game. Even the solo experience is really a two player game. Mainly because as solo you need to control at least two mages. What makes it so good at two players is that you each get two turns to go along with the Nemesis two turns. At four player you’d have each mage go once prepping in round one, and attacking in round two. You get that, but it feels more powerful with two players, though it really isn’t.

1. Dice Throne

Finally, we have Dice Throne. Dice Throne is a game that I love as a two player game, but I think it’s great as a King of a Hill style free for all. It makes sense at two because it’s kind of a Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat battler of a game. Game play is slick with upgrading abilities and then Yahtzee style dice rolling and battling.

Final Thoughts

There are a lot of games that are good at two players. For me, these fourteen aren’t always ones that I need to only play at two, but are really strong at two. And I have a number on my shelf to play. I want to get The Inbetween to the table, as well as Seven Wonders Duel, and the previously mentioned Fox in the Forest and Fox in the Forest Duet.

What are some of your favorite two player games?

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If you need to catch up all the videos are over on the Malts and Meeples YouTube Channel. And The next part of the list will be live on next Wednesday, October 6th at 8 PM Central Time.

100 Through 91

90 Through 81

Top 100 Board Games – 80 through 71

80. Just One

This is an interesting party game in that it’s fully cooperative. A lot of party games have teams against each other, or everyone is vying for solo victory, but not that many are cooperative. In this game, one person is the guesser, the other people are giving clues for one word. The other people write down a single word clue. If they duplicate both those clues go away, and the guesser has less clues to guess from. So you want to give a unique, but meaningful clue, or maybe the most obvious one and hope no one else does. We do house rule it so you don’t get penalized for a wrong guess and the game is still great.

Buy on Miniature Market

79. Merchants Cove

It’s one of two highly asymmetrical games on the list, Merchants Cove has you taking on one of several different roles, building up your own engine of things that you do, to try and get goods to sell to merchants. The Captain uses a spinner in some of what they do, the Oracle does it as a roll and write, the Inn keeper is guessing how merchants are going to show up, the alchemist is playing a version of Potion Explosion. The game works well at 2-3 and the different characters are great. Not a complex game but a lot of fun.

Buy on CoolStuffInc

78. The Grimm Masquerade

I called this social deduction, but it’s more hidden role and deduction. In this game you are trying to collect your masquerade character’s gift. But there is a gift you don’t want to get because it’ll reveal who you are. The game is simple to play, you just flip a card and decide to keep it or give it away. You’re trying to get them to bust while getting your correct gifts. Once you’ve decide with your first card you flip and do the opposite with the next. So it might make you closer to busting, or help you, you don’t know. Plus you can guess who other characters are for even more points. Pretty simple game and great artwork.

Not Available

77. Dice Forge

Some games have a lot of toy factor and are just okay games. Other games have great toy factor and are really good games. Dice Forge is a really good game. It has really good toy factor too in that you change up the side of the dice. You build up an engine which allows you to get cards for points but also pull off a side of a die and get a new side. It’s fairly themeless but the artwork is really nice and game play is a lot of fun. What resources do you add to your dice, and how do you optimize to score the most points?

Buy On Miniature Market

76. Claim

I like trick taking games, I own a number of them, but I haven’t played a ton of them. Claim, though, is a really fun trick taking game. The game plays over two rounds, the first you’re playing to build your hand, and the second hand is your actual scoring hand. It is interesting because to build your hand you are trying to win or lose tricks based off of a card that is flipped up. So if it’s a low card of a suit you try and lose and get a blind card instead. Plus the suits have powers which are interesting as well. It also plays really quickly, which is what I want in trick taking.

Buy on Miniature Market

75. Small World

Small World is a game that I call Risk but fun. Plus Small World has you with special powers and fantasy races which let you be different than everyone else. And you are always fighting people, you can gang up on someone in a great position, but then they put their fantasy race into decline and come in with another and attack. There’s no getting stuck in a corner and just left alive in this game. It is faster than Risk, more entertaining and just a really good area control game.

Buy on CoolStuffInc

74. Star Wars: Rebellion

Star Wars in a box. This game is kind of the original trilogy where one player is the Empire and the other player is the Rebels. The Rebels are trying to complete missions to subvert the Empire to win the game. The Empire is just trying to find the Rebel base and wipe that off the map. The game has you moving troops, fighting battles, capturing enemy leaders, and more. It works well, it’s a big game, and even with dice combat it’s a whole lot of fun.

Buy on Miniature Market

73. Pandemic Legacy: Season 1

This is the game that has dropped massively. It was my #10 game overall last year, and honestly could probably be higher. This is how I want to play Pandemic, whatever Legacy season. The reason it’s dropped is that I’ve played through it twice already. So do I need to play it again, I could and I’d like it. But it’s also a legacy game, so I know a bunch of the story and the beats. The game I still highly recommend and if you’re looking for a fresh way to play Pandemic, it’s an amazing cooperative gaming experience.

Buy on Miniature Market

72. Root

Root is the more complex of the two asymmetrical games on the list. Each faction plays differently, but you need to know how the other factions work because that matters for how you play the game. You take on different groups of creatures in the woods from the Eyrie to the Marquise de Cat to a Woodland Alliance and more. The game has you fighting and trying to get area control in a lot of ways. Really smartly done game but harder to learn. I want to start playing it again more often because it’s really good.

Buy on Miniature Market

71. Medium

Another party game to wrap up this section of the list. Medium is amazingly fun. The game has you and a partner on a turn you try and guess the word between two words that you’ve played down. If you match up you get the higher point tokens, if not you try and come up with the linking word between the two that you just said. And now you see if you match again. It’s a good funny party game that has you thinking but it’s somewhat cooperative because matching helps you. And even if it’s not your go, you’ll be thinking of a word that connects just to see if you’d match.

Buy on Amazon

The Next Ten

The list is now 30 games in, and we’re getting close to that mid point. The disclaimer as always, while I like the games higher on the list more, the games on this list are all really good in my opinion. So if you want to see what the next ten are live you can join me next Wednesday. And in general to know when I go live, you can subscribe and click the notification bell. That’ll alert you when I am going to go live or when I put up a new video.

Thanks for checking out the list. Let me know which of these games you’d like to get to the table most? Any that you haven’t tried or that you know you already love?

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But like any person, I enjoy certain themes more than others. You can probably guess some of them based off of the games that I talk about the most, but let’s run down my Top 10 favorite themes in board games.

The List

On this list, going back to yesterday’s post, you are going to see some things where you’ll think, that’s theme is a subset of another theme on the list. Some themes, Sci-Fi and Fantasy, for example, are really broad.

10. Fairy Tales

This is a theme that I don’t see enough in games that target adults. Fairy Tales are often used for kids games, and while that’s a great spot for them, let’s not lie, the original fairy tales were messed up stories that didn’t end well. The versions that we know, those aren’t w hat they first at the start. So I love to see that twisted, but maybe closer to the actual theme fairy tale games.

The Grimm Masquerade

So, my example is going to be The Grimm Masquerade. This creates a hidden role game that is actually pretty interesting for me. I don’t love games like Mafia, Werewolf, or the Resistance because they are generally too simple. The Grimm Masquerade is all about figuring out who is what character, but how it is done is really interesting. Mainly because you have a draw a card and either keep it or give it away, and then the other action with your second card. Simple mechanics and fun game play.

9. Exploration

Honestly, I think if I do this again in two years, explorations will be higher on my list. I have mainly played a couple games that use this theme. And you could argue that it’s more of a mechanic, but I am thinking of that Indiana Jones type feel, where you have fantastic things going on, and you are discovering it with the other people at the tables. There are a few other games that dabble in this in another category that comes up. But I like the feeling of going into that new area and not knowing what I might find.

Tainted Grail

Now, Tainted Grail falls into a few other themes coming up here as well, but it works well here. The biggest element of Tainted Grail is diving in and exploring the massive, well written world that Awaken Realms has created. They even have an exploration journal which has so many things that you can do in it, and some many different paths you can go. It is probably impossible to actually find all the different options which is amazing.

8. Zombies

Yes, Zombies get their own theme. There are so many zombie games out there, and I tend to like them. Zombie games fall mainly into two categories. You either are mowing down zombies to get away from them, or you are trying to survive and it’s about the people versus killing zombies. Both are a lot of fun, and I have games with both types. I even have one where you are the zombies, but that one is a bit themeless really with Zombie Dice.

Dead of Winter

No shock which one I picked here, there are a lot of zombie games, but this one I have played the most. This is one where it is about the survivors and trying to make it through the cold of winter and complete your objectives. It’s interesting because it is cooperative with the possibility of a traitor, but it’s not as well. Because each player has a secret objective they need to complete to be part of the winning group. It is an interesting dynamic that works pretty well but won’t be for everyone. It does help simulate what your survivor(s) might care about most.

7. Lovecraftian

So another one that has a darker theme, we’re talking about Lovecraft. Now, this is not like Lovecraft’s books, but more the investigative, pulp, noir, theme that has been put on it by Fantasy Flight Games, mainly, and other companies as well. The main thing that ties it back to Lovecraft is that it uses his monsters to create a more fleshed out world of intrigue, investigation and tentacles.

Mansions of Madness

A few options I could have gone with, there are a ton of games with a Lovecraftian theme because, well, it is a public domain. Don’t have a theme, slap Lovecraft on it. But Mansions of Madness is my favorite. It is taking this city view or world view that some of the other games have and focusing it down to a neighborhood or a mansion. Add in the app which changes things up so you can play the same scenario multiple times and things will vary slightly. Just a nice, deeply thematic game.

6. Detective

Building off of what Lovecraftian themes do with their horror added, I like games where you are the person trying to figure out who done it. I would still even play something like Clue which is one of the first games that did that. But the genre has improved so much over time and you can have Sherlock Holmes, though I haven’t played any of the Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective games.

Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game

It has Detective in it’s name, it has to be good, right? Well, not really, but it was very good. This takes all of the best parts of those procedural cop shows and drops you into it. You are the one making the decisions, picking up on clues, and trying to solve the case. The base box is amazing, and I have a bunch more stuff to play for it. They are now even doing a spy theme using the same system that I am really excited about.

5. Mythology

Welcome to the second category that Tainted Grail falls into it. But I really like games that can pull from different mythologies, Norse, Greek, Roman, Mayan, and more to create interesting board games. And the idea of playing as the gods or adjacent to the gods is always interesting. Especially because of the different powers the gods have and how that can translate into what you are doing. I also get to learn stuff about mythologies that I might not know much about.

Lords of Hellas

This takes a few things and puts them together. It is a bit like the world of Horizon Zero Dawn where the monsters look like creatures but are machines, and it has a cyber punk element. This game definitely leans more into the mythological side of things as you play different heroes and build towers to the gods. I love the different win conditions and the theme just makes the game that much more compelling.

4. Sci-Fi

Broad category #1, science fiction. There are a few different types, and I tend to prefer space exploration type of Sci-Fi versus weird future worlds. Though, things like Shadowrun are technically Sci-Fi and I like that Cyberpunk theme. However, I really like the grander feel that space exploration has in general. And there are a ton of great board games that fall into the realm of space.

Star Wars: Rebellion

Now this could be consider cheating a little bit because Star Wars could be it’s own theme. But it is also a space game. While you aren’t exploring as much, the empire is exploring planets trying to narrow down where the rebels can be. This feels like the original trilogy as it is cat and mouse. The empire trying to squash the rebel fleets and find their base, and the rebels trying to subvert the empires plan. It is also a big game, probably playing in about three hours or a bit less, if you know what you are doing. Ton of fun, Star Wars in a box.

3. Fantasy

Now, the second to last category that Tainted Grail could fit into, I love fantasy games. Unlike Sci-Fi where I prefer space sci-fi, I like almost any type of fantasy. Whether it’s a grim dark world like Tainted Grail, urban fantasy like The Dresden Files Cooperative Card Game, or silly fantasy like Smallworld, I like games that have fantasy in them. There’s just something about slinging spells and fighting dragons or other crazy monsters that is a lot of fun.

Gloomhaven

No surprise what game I am going with here, Gloomhaven is my favorite game of all time. It has you on this massive epic adventure as you try and figure out all that is happening in the lands. But beyond that, the game has amazing card play and really unique fantasy creatures to fight and play as. The amount of world building that went into Gloomhaven is amazing.

2. Superhero

I flipped the last two at the last second, but Superheroes, they are just below my #1, because, well, there are a lot of poor superhero games out there. So this theme will always get me interested whether I’m playing as a superhero or fighting against them. But because DC and Marvel are both very popular in general, that means that there are some poorer games out there. But tell me that a board game has a Marvel theme, I am always going to check it out.

Marvel Champions

A Marvel game, no surprise there. I really like Marvel Champions a lot. It is a great game that they keep on adding more great content for. This is the one that has me playing a hero that I know and love from Marvel and I feel like that hero. If I am playing Spider-Man, I can go in there with a swinging web kick, or I can flip over to Peter Parker, the bad guy won’t fight me, and I can recover. Of course, then the bad guy is scheming until I can get in there again to stop their plans and take them down.

1. Horror

Finally, my number 1, Horror. I love horror in board games. From games where it is a one off scenario to games where it is a full campaign. The grim dark fantasy nature of Tainted Grail makes it also dabble into horror. But Zombie and Lovecraftian games also fall into that category as well. Zombies can be more survival and Lovecraftian can be more investigative, so horror get’s it’s own. I love not knowing what’s around the corner, what horror might be popping up and the feeling of the impending doom if things don’t go well.

Betrayal at House on the Hill

Now, I know this one will be controversial. There are people who do not like this game, I love it. I think that it is really well done and it gives you that feeling of horror movies. You don’t know what is around the next corner, if a good twist happens, you don’t know who is going to be betray you, and you don’t know if you will survive. Is it well balanced, probably not, but I really like the thematic and cinematic feeling it gives me.

What Is Your Favorite Theme?

Let me know in the comments below or over on Twitter what themes in board games you like best. There are a lot of them out there. I could have broken down Fantasy and Sci-Fi more as well. Are there any that you feel are used too much?

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To add in a little more detail about making the list, I’m saying that these games are best with two players, so two player games still do count. But I’m talking about games that could play up to a high number, but for some reason, time between turns, randomness of the game, I think that they work best with two players and would recommend trying them there first or that they’ll be most enjoyable at that player count.

Let’s see the list…

10 – Sword & Sorcery
This dungeon crawl game I’ve only played at two players, but I can’t really see playing it with more. Now, even at two players we’re controlling more characters, two each, but that hasn’t caused the game to bog down. I feel like, with more players, we’d end up spending more time in discussion for this cooperative game and planning to then have fairly random results on the dice. The game needs to be snappier with how you get through it, and with only two people at the table, even though I might not be taking my turn, I can always be the one rolling for monsters, and if there aren’t monsters, turns go incredibly fast. With more people, there’s just be more downtime for players, even if playing with the same number of characters. Sword & Sorcery, though, is a very fun ameritrash style dungeon crawl game where you’re chucking dice and leveling up to get through a fairly generic fantasy story with a few choices in it.

9 – Star Wars: Imperial Assault
I’ve done with solo and two players, and I prefer two players in this game, for the reason that, using the app, you need to do house keeping, and that house keeping can be a bit of a bear, but, if you are splitting the duties between two people it makes it easier. Plus, the minimum number of characters you can play with is two, so even solo you’re controlling two characters. This is the Star Wars dungeon crawl game taking place as Vader is chasing the rebels from their first base eventually leading to Hoth and beyond. You are not playing the main characters, Vader shows up as a side character whom you can’t beat, but that’s fine, the game is a lot of fun, and it feels a bit like a Rogue One type of game, but, for me, more enjoyable.

8 – Five Tribes
Now, I enjoy Five Tribes at all player counts, two through four, but I think it works best at two for one main reason. When determining play order for each round, it is done by bidding. Normally, each person has one play order marker, but in two players, each player has two. That means that you can set it up where you go twice in a row. Five Tribes is really a point salad type of game where everything you do is going to give you points, with an Mancala mechanism thrown in there where you’re moving meeples and then get to keep the matching colors of meeples to do something. So if you can see two really good moves, playing two players, allows you to bid for them and set up two good turns for yourself. Otherwise, you’ll probably only get one of them, which might mess up strategy.

7 – Skulk Hollow
First of the two player only games, Skulk Hollow is a ton of a fun as one player plays the foxen kingdom and the other an old guardian that has awoken on the lands. Each side has their own goal, the foxen trying to take down the guardian, but the guardian might have other things to consider like killing the foxen leader or maybe killing a certain number of the foxen kingdom, placing out a number of tentacles, or something along those lines, it varies as to which guardian you play. This gives the game a lot of replayability, because not only do you have the different guardians, but different leaders for the foxen kingdom. So playing the two sides gives a different game feel and playing the different leaders or guardians against each other can change things up as well. The card play is very slick in the game, and the whole thing just works well and looks really cool on the table.

6 – Hats
This was one of the first games when I thought of the list. Hats is a game that plays more than two, but definitely one that I think works better at two. At four, it’s just more random, and I’m not sure that I’ve played it at the three player count. In this game you have a hand of cards that you are playing down onto a table at the Madd Hatter’s tea party. Where you play a card gets you the previous card that was there, and you’re trying to set it up for getting the most points. At four players, the scoring is just more random. You can card count so potentially set up a scoring to help you, but with that exception of one scoring, you’ll just need luck on your side. But at two players, there’s more strategy to the play. You can go digging for cards and try and set-up what looks like poor scoring for yourself to only swap it at the end of the game to get even better scoring. It becomes much more of a strategic experience at the two player count and is a more interesting game that way.

5 – Star Wars Rebellion
Technically it can be a four player game, but Star Wars Rebellion is really a two player game where one side plays the Empire and the other the Rebels. At four players, you just split the two sides up and it’s still just two people playing the Empire and then two playing the Rebels. Keep the decision making more focused and Star Wars Rebellion is great. It’s a good cat and mouse game as the Empire tries to hunt down the Rebel’s secret base and the Rebels are trying to do missions and survive long enough to turn the tide against the Empire. You can have Darth Vader face off against Obi-Wan as in the movies, but maybe Darth Vader will run across Chewbacca or Han Solo or Wedge Antilles, you never know. There’s good strategic play, but then also a lot of fun space battles and land battles on planets surfaces that you can partake in as well which are good dice chucking.

4 – The Dresden Files Cooperative Card Game
I’ve played The Dresden Files with, I believe, all of it’s player counts, and I think that I like two players the best. Mainly because it’s a faster back and forth turn taking game instead of waiting for things to get passed around between more people. You do have the interesting thing of playing two characters with their decks shuffled together, which can create some interesting situations, but overall, I feel like it works pretty well. In this game you’re playing through the Dresden Files books, and you’re trying to defeat villains and solve cases. But you have limited resources to do that, so you’re balancing keeping those resources up by discarding cards, but also knowing that you won’t likely draw any or at least many more cards, so what you have in your starting hand you’ll have for the game. The game play is smart, and I like that you’re playing through a book at a time. A very enjoyable game for fans of the series, and an interesting puzzle for those who haven’t read them.

3 – Dice Throne
Dice Throne can technically be played as teams or King of the Hill style where you go after the person who has the most life, but I like it best at two players. There are a couple of reasons for this dice chucking combat game that make it work better at that count. First, there is less downtime. Either it’s my turn and I’m playing cards and rolling dice, or it’s my opponents turn and I’m likely rolling my dice on defense. With higher player counts, it’s going to potentially put you in a situation where you don’t roll anything for a couple of turns. The other thing is that the game is just faster overall. With the higher player counts, again more turns, but to go with that, more health to get through, so you could, theoretically, have someone eliminated and then sit there watching for a bit. But at two players, once you get the other person’s health down to zero, game over and you can reset and play again.

2 – Hanamikoji
Two player only game where you are trying to win the favor of Geisha. It’s a unique theme as you are playing down cards to give them gifts, but what makes it most interesting in the card play in the game. Each player, per round, is given four actions that they can do once in a round, you can play a card secretly or discard two cards secretly, and those a fairly normal sorts of actions. But the other two are very interesting. You can play down three cards face up, your opponent gets to pick one of those gifts and put it on their side to win a Geisha’s favor and you get the other two, and then the last action is that you can put down two sets of two cards in front of you where your opponent again picks which one they want and you get the others. It offers some really brain burning decisions, and often times you need to force your opponent to decide your strategy by the cards you put down when they are choosing from them. Rounds are very fast, and the game is just a lot of fun.

1 – Marvel Champions
Now, I can’t say that I’ve played this at higher player counts than two, but I have played it at one player. From what I’ve heard with four players, the game can be a little bit slow between turns as you’re waiting for everyone else to go. But at one and two players this game is a lot of fun. In two, you can think about strategy more so, and develop interesting combos or strategies that work well together as compared to solo game play. Now, both I enjoy a lot, but teaming Captain America up with Thor taking down the Green Goblin was a blast, or you can do She Hulk and Spider-Man versus Ultron. You have a ton of different options and playing at two players it allows you to do a team up that maybe you wouldn’t normally see in the comics or maybe one that you really love from the comics that you can now play in game. Marvel Champions is just a really good card game that lets you feel like a super hero.

This list, I was worried, was going to be hard, but there are some games that are just two players that I really love and others that I really do think work much better at two players. Maybe later this week or the start of next week I’ll do a six plus player list for when things start to normalize again and we can do board game nights. I know that I have one of the big two player games missing from my list, it’s on my shelf, but I haven’t done 7 Wonders Duel yet. I’ll need to get it to the table, and there are a lot of other games that are enjoyable to very good at two players, but I just prefer them with more.

What are some of your favorite two player games? Are there some games with higher player counts that are just better at two players for you?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What are some of your favorite games with an IP?

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Kind of like before with fantasy, we’re not going to count space games, so something about going to the moon and the space race, not Sci-Fi. We’re also not going to just limit it to games set in space, there’s way more to Sci-Fi than that. And finally, it’s not going to be Sci-Fi adjacent games, Smash Up has aliens and robots, two common Sci-Fi things, but Smash Up is not a Sci-Fi games.

10 – Risk Legacy
Now, Risk is not a Sci-Fi game, but Risk Legacy is. You’re on a planet that has been terraformed to look like Earth for some reason, and of course you are all fighting over it. You have mechs and missions and it’s basically an area control game, but so much better than basic Risk. Combat is still the same, roll dice, try and take over other territories, however, you have ways to get victory points and when someone has three, the game ends and they are the winner. So a game of Risk Legacy is way shorter, plus, you unlock cool things as the game goes along and some crazy things that really change up the game. It’s a definitely blast to play and you have a usable, though odd, board afterwards, so it isn’t just for the fifteen or so games in the Legacy campaign that you can play.

9 – Star Wars: Imperial Assault
While there are other Sci-Fi dungeon crawlers out there, this is my favorite of them. It has a theme that I love, Star Wars, and it can be played either one versus many with the one player being the DM who is running the empire, or you can play through a campaign using an app where everyone is able to play a rebel and team up together that way. So the game offers flexibility and it offers a lot of fun dice chucking. Now, you don’t get to play all the famous characters, Luke or Darth Vader might show up in the story, but you don’t get to play as them. Instead you’re playing around the main Star Wars story with the campaign in the app. That’s fun as well as you get to kind of flesh out the world in game form. This isn’t my highest Star Wars game on the list, though.

8 – Cry Havoc
This is a very thinky and interesting Sci-Fi game that borrows from Avatar. In this game there are up to four different factions who are fighting for control of crystals on a planet. The Trogs, Humans, and Mechs are all going to be out there and fighting fairly often, whereas the Pilgrims are going to just collecting as many crystals as they can. This game has some interesting card play where you can use the symbols on the cards for your actions, such as moving, recruiting, and building. But at the same time, you need those for when you get into combat, and the combat is unique as well. It has a track of majority, capture, kill. And whomever wins the majority gets the territory, and to do that, you’re just putting your troops from the area onto the various sections. Then you can use cards to move them around an manipulate them. After that, it’s pretty simple, whomever has majority gets the area, then you can capture someone if you played anyone there, limiting your opponents troop totals, and then you can kill off troops so they don’t go back on the board. It’s a very different sort of area control game, but one that works out well.

7 – Gravwell
The closest thing to just being a space game on the list. This one is also the simplest game on the list. You and the other players have had your space ships sucked into a wormhole which is pulling you into a black hole. All you want to do it get back out through the wormhole before it closes. But you’re out of fuel, thankfully you have pure elements on your ship and you can toss those in to try and fly. What is fun is that some elements move you towards the nearest ship (forwards or backwards), or push you away from the nearest ship, or draw ships nearer to you. So while you are trying to escape, you are also worried about what other people are going to be be playing, does my element come after their element alphabetically, if so will they move ahead of me so I can then move ahead of them, or will it pull me backwards, the game is simple, fast, and fun.

6 – Not Alone
So, Star Wars: Imperial Assault was a one versus all game that can be completely cooperative, this game is just a one versus all. In traditional Sci-Fi horror fashion, you’ve crash landed on a planet and you are waiting for a search and rescue party to come get you, and things are alright on the ship, but you need to go out and get supplies, and when you do, you find that you’re not alone on the planet and what’s there wants to take you out. So most of the people are playing the crew of the ship and one person is the monster/planet. The players are planning out where they are going, and they can discuss as much as they want, split up however they want, or discuss as little as they want, but the monster player has to be able to hear it all. It makes it a fun little cat and mouse game as they try and do things to get the ship there faster. And the monster has powers that they can play to mess with things, and then they go to a location, based off of the cards played and what they’ve heard and if they catch crew there or kill crew, they get closer to their winning goal of taking out all of the crew. It’s a fun game and for a small box game it plays pretty fast and simple.

5 – Star Wars: Rebellion
Second and last Star Wars game on the list, Rebellion is what they call on the Dice Tower, and I agree with, Star Wars in a box. You get to play the cat and mouse game of the original trilogy of the empire searching for the rebels hidden base and the rebels trying to sabotage the empire to the point where they can take it down. You get all the classic characters for your leaders, you get to have ground and space battles, overall, the game is just a lot of fun. Now, it’s a two player only game (technically 4 but that’s just splitting up what two players do), and it’s a long one, probably about three hours, unless the empire gets lucky. There’s still dice chucking in combat, so it can be a bit lucky, but overall, it’s a really fun game and a good amount of strategy in the game.

4 – Lords of Hellas
Probably the oddest one on the list, because technically it’s built around ancient Greece and it’s mythology. But there are robots and you are playing in this future cyber punk sort of setting. This is one where the Sci-Fi theme comes through less than some others, but I really like the game. Five players it’s a bit long but that was also a learning game. What makes this game really good in my opinion is that you have so many ways you can win. You can take over two complete regions, you can hold five regions with temples, defeat 3 monsters, or hold a completed statue at the end of three rounds. The game does so many clever things and you feel like you’re going to do one strategy, and then depending on how it goes, you might change that up mid game and basically everyone in our game did that and all of us were at points in time a turn or two away from winning. A really fun game, complex to learn but pretty simple to play.

3 – Clank! In! Space!
This is the tongue in cheek Sci-Fi game, which had to show up on the list at some point in in time. There’s so much Sci-Fi out there, that it’s hard not to make a goof on it at some points. That said, Clank! In! Space! is a great game as you are racing against your opponents into Lord Eradikus’s ship in hopes to steal the best treasure and get out. But sometimes you’re going to make noise, and if you do, you might cause Eradikus to start moving and drawing out cubes (known as clank) and get closer to finding you and taking you out. So how much do you push your luck? Plus, the cards you use are funny and the push your luck and deck building combination of the game works really well. Definitely a fun one, and if you want a fantasy theme instead, just go with Clank or Clank Legacy, which I talked about yesterday.

2 – T.I.M.E. Stories
I said this almost made my fantasy list, the issue was that only one scenario was that fantasy focused. The whole game has a heavy Sci-Fi theme to it. You are part of a time cop team, basically, policing the timeline to stop evil organizations from messing things up for their own gain. Each scenario is different, you might be in ancient Egypt, jump to a timeline where there is magic and dragons, go to a Victorian Asylum, or any other location you can imagine. You go on runs hoping to be able to solve the case and puzzles quickly, but you’ll probably have to go again and again and then hopefully you’ll get it. It’s a lot of fun, you have a good variety to the things that you can do each time, and while sometimes you might need to fight more, that’s probably going to be focus of that case not of all of them. I really enjoy it for the escape room puzzle type feel for it, and the story that they have throughout that tie things together, but also the story of each pack.

1 – XenoShyft: Onslaught
Finally, my favorite Sci-Fi game, and it’s all about fighting bugs. Starship Troopers is a fun and funny movie. While XenoShyft takes itself more seriously, you’re fighting bugs on an alien planet, so I don’t feel like it’s very that serious. This is a cooperative tower defense deck building game. Yeah, there’s a bunch going on in it, and I haven’t even gotten to the cool part. You face off against wave after wave of bugs hoping to keep them from hitting your base by deploying troops, giving them weapons and armor, healing them, whatever you need to do to defend your part of the base. And everyone has their own part. However, if you have a grenade, you can throw it to someone else’s part of the base and use it there, if someone else doesn’t have enough weapons or even troops, you can send some their way, you won’t get them back, but you can send them. You can even drop in paratroopers for someone else. So there’s such a good puzzle aspect and cooperative aspect to the game, it makes it work really well and is a ton of fun.

So in my top 100, that got me about down to #61. That seems like it might be a ways down, but I’ve played around 300 games, so 60 is top 20% of games I’ve played. Now, I’m sure there are a whole lot more Sci-Fi games that I should checkout, but what are some of your favorites from my list? Are there any you want to check out now? What should I checkout?

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10 – Dead of Winter
The zombies have taken over and you need to find a cure, get enough fuel to move, or one of several more scenarios, but can you trust everyone in your midst? Probably not, and should they fully trust you, probably not. In this game you play as survivors of the zombie apocalypse who are just trying to survive against the horde of zombies in the town, but there might be a traitor in your midst. There’s a sense of adventure in this game as you feel like you’re playing through The Walking Dead or other zombie time story where it is more focused on the survivors and if you can really trust them. Plus, the crossroads cards offer you a lot of tough decisions to make as well, maybe you can save someone and add them to your team, but will there be enough food to feed them? You’ll end up having to make choices like that throughout the game, and often times with no easy answers or right choices for the colony.

9 – Star Wars: Rebellion
A massive around three hours long game, Star Wars: Rebellion pits the rebels against the Empire in a battle for the fate of the galaxy. Taking from the original trilogy, you feel like you’re playing through it but shaping it your own way. Can you crush the rebel fleets and find where there base in hidden? Or will they be able to sow enough descent around the galaxy that the Empire crumbles away. And you get to send major characters out on missions to places, maybe Han Solo will get captured by the Emperor or Darth Vader will lead troops into battle against Admiral Ackbar on Tatooine. You can rewrite the original trilogy in this adventure and you won’t know how the story will end up until you’ve played.

8 – Dresden Files Cooperative Card Game
I was debating about this one on the list, is it really an adventure because it’s fairly abstracted away with trying to solve cases and fight bad guys just by putting tokens on them. But I feel like the puzzly nature of how you have to do that, and the fact it brings me back to the books and series, there is that sense of adventure for me as I get a chance to relive and play through those books myself. And there’s always a struggle to win in this game. Sometimes you can just win without getting into the final confrontation, but that’s extremely rare. Instead, so often you are hoping for a lucky last roll to take out the bad guy, which is thematic to the books, because through sheer stubbornness and sometimes force of will, Harry can prevail, and that’s how it works in the game as well. Less of a grand epic adventure than some, but still a fun one, especially for fans of the series.

7 – The Lost Expedition
Now, this is probably not a game that a lot of people would have thought of when they were thinking of an adventure game. It’s a small game, it’s only cards and very few tokens, and all you’re doing is going on a hike each morning and evening trying to make it to the Lost City of Z. However, there’s a sense of adventure to it as you are all cooperatively trying to play down cards in a way that makes sense without being able to communicate. But then, once the cards are down and your path is ready, you can all discuss as how to best go through it. It always feels like a close game and you have to decide when it’s worth it to sacrifice a guide in order to move ahead or to keep another guide alive. This game isn’t going to give you a big adventure, but it’s a fast adventure in a little package that won’t break the bank.

6 – Arkham Horror: The Card Game
The first of a couple of Fantasy Flights Arkham Chronicles games, this one has a very interesting adventure feel from what I’ve played, which admittedly isn’t a ton of it yet, but you get the sense of exploring, just from the first scenario in the first box, a house that is being twisted and warped around you. Then in the second one, you get a chance to run around the town and look for cultists who might just be hiding in the shadows. And all of this builds, so depending on what you do, scenarios or perks you’ve gotten will change, so it feels like a big unfolding adventure. And I like that it doesn’t come in a massive box, it’s just cards with a few tokens and you can have an epic adventure.

5 – T.I.M.E. Stories
This one is interesting because there’s a smaller level of adventure in the game since each scenario is it’s own mystery or puzzle to solve, but it always feels like something new as you unpack what’s going on. You could be in a mental hospital at the start where a time incursion is about to happen or maybe a town that has been quarantined for some reason or in ancient Egypt. While you might know where your adventure is going to take you, you don’t know how it’s going to unfold or what body you’re going to be put into. I really enjoy this as an escape room type of engine where you have to figure out the puzzle in the box, but it’s not as straight forward as a lot of the Unlock and Exit style games are, because why they might be fairly consistent in what they do, T.I.M.E. Stories is not.

4 – Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon
I need to play more of this adventure, but what I’ve played thus far has been great. There is just so much story happening, and it gives you a different sense of adventure because it adds in such a strong survival element as well. So not only are you going out into the land of Avalon and searching for ways to keep the land from falling into the Wyrdness, you have to figure out when to fight, when to run away, what path you want to go, the fact that there’s a branching story in a game that is so long and so big is pretty amazing. It’s also a really good solo experience. When a game offers you so many choices as to where to go, what to explore there, what you might run into, who you can help and side mysteries that you might want to check out as well, it’s very much an adventure game, and it’s one of the best I’ve come across.

3 – Betrayal At House on the Hill
Now, I know this game isn’t for everyone, but I love it. And for me it’s a great adventure game because I get to see what horror film I’m in. Am I going to be the final one standing in the end or the person who betrays everyone else. Will I have to play chess with death or maybe it’ll be the Rocky Horror Picture Show. I never know. Plus, I get to explore the house and have it unfold before me, and I never know in what room the haunt might happen, so I can basically always play a new scenario. I have Betrayal Legacy waiting for me at some point in time coming up here when we can start to get together in groups again, because I want to have the adventure of playing through a house year after year and watch the house change and unfold a new adventure. Now, I know that this game isn’t for some because it’s not always the most balanced, but I like that aspect as it works well in a horror setting because some horror movie monsters are just better than the college students.

2 – Mansions of Madness 2nd Edition
Adventure games don’t have to be on a super grand globe trotting scale, they can be in a small town or even in a mansion that is full of madness. But you’re unfolding a story and a mystery that gives me a sense of adventure because playing a scenario once, I don’t know what is going to happen and where cultists might show up or what my main goal is even sometimes. As the game unfolds that and explains it to you and as you unravel the mysteries, it just makes a great gaming adventure experience. And even if you play a scenario once, because of the app, you can go back and play it again and things might end the same, but the house will be set-up differently and there will be still be some adventure to the game. Mansions of Madness just really gives you that immersive experience of exploring and solving a puzzle/mystery unlike so many other games.

1 – Gloomhaven
I believe that this was left off someone’s list on the Dice Tower top 10, because it didn’t have enough exploring, though, I feel like Forgotten Circles expansion definitely has more of that feel. But I would argue that there is a sense of exploring through the story as you complete the various dungeons and you unlock more story and more places to go. Plus, even though you’re a mercenary team who keeps retiring, you still feel the progression of story and adventure that I’m looking for and love in a game. It has that RPG-lite feel to it with leveling up your characters and getting better at what you can do, so the whole thing feels like you’re taking those characters on epic adventures. While the mechanics for combat can be a bit crunchy as you figure out what tops and bottoms of cards to use and what order to play them in, the whole thing just works really well for me.

Now, I could have gone with more as well, Sword & Sorcery just missed the list. The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle Earth or Lord of the Rings board game would work as well. Even something like Pandemic Legacy I considered for the list, but that one doesn’t give me as much sense of adventure. And I have more adventure games waiting for me to play, Apocrypha, Folklore: The Affliction, Aeon’s End Legacy and more are waiting for me to give into, plus more coming in the mail at some point in time like Oathsworn, Dice Throne Adventure (it says it in it’s name) or Frosthaven next year. So clearly I love these big epic sort of games.

How about you, what are some of your favorite adventure games? Are there any on the list that I should checkout?

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When I am creating this list, I’m not just looking at games where it is mainly rolling dice, I’m looking at games where rolling those dice is a very important part of the game. So it’s not just going to be a bunch of roll and write games or older games, but a variety of games that rely on dice. I would guess that some people won’t consider the games to use the dice enough, but for me, it’s one of the major mechanics in the game, which is enough to get it onto the list.

10 – Sword and Sorcery
A good ameritrash game to take the #10 spot on the list, Sword and Sorcery has some story to it, but it’s all about crawling through the “dungeon” to advance the story, running across different monsters, fighting them and then going back and doing it all again. When you fight monsters, it’s about chucking dice. If you can gang up on them, you get get some automatic hits, or if you have the right items, you get more automatic hits, or if you aim, and maybe with all of that and a good roll you’ll be able to take a monster down in one hit. This game is about making you feel like a hero fighting through the dungeon and it might be a little bit easy. That said, the dice rolling is fun, especially with the extra symbols on the dice, not just hits or misses, because if you get the right combo, maybe you can boost your damage some more or ignore their armor. Of course, after your turn, you have to roll for the enemies and they might just hit you back hard and take you down as well. It’s a good straight forward dice chucking dungeon crawling game.

9 – Dead of Winter
I like the idea of games where the number of the dice matter, and not just in a simple comparison of does my number beat your number, if so, I win, like Risk. Dead of Winter gives you a lot to do with those dice. You can kill zombies, if you rolled high enough, you can search locations, if you rolled high enough, or you can barricade or do other things spending dice to keep the small group of survivors alive another day. There is no dice mitigation in this game, so that means that what you roll you get. Now, there are always things you can use the dice for, but it might not be what you really want. And while the dice roll is a random thing, it is one of the things that makes everyone look a little bit like a traitor, nothing that they can do about it, but it feels like a bad roll is somehow more likely to make a traitor. And that’s what Dead of Winter is about, it’s about fighting zombies, but it’s more about can you trust your fellow survivors, so are they out to get you?

8 – Village Attacks
Sometimes you just want to be a monster, and Village Attacks, you’re able to do that. You and your team of monsters are just resting in your castle most likely at the top of a cliff that somehow manages to keep the village below it in constant shadow when those pesky villagers decide to ruin your evening by attacking your castle with their pitchforks and torches. Can you fend them off? That’s what you use the dice for, they give you the ability to move, attack ranged, attack close and do other things, such as defend against the damage that might be coming your way. There’s less dice mitigation in this one, so you better hope that you roll well. But if you do roll three of the same symbol you are always able to reroll that until you don’t have it anymore. The theme is just fun, and while the game is a bit dark, I’ve found that it plays sillier because of the theme and the idea of these monsters just wanting some peace and quiet but the villagers keep bugging them.

7 – Homebrewers
I love beer, so Homebrewers might be higher on my list than some, but it’s a fun small engine building game where the engine that you’re building is the beers that you are creating. You do that by getting ingredient cards and adding them to your different brews. But the dice play a major part in that, the dice you get have to clean up the mess you’ve made while brewing, get you ingredients, add in ingredients, get you grain for brewing, and brew your beer, so your one roll is very important. However, there’s good dice mitigation just in case you rolled almost all of a single symbol. You can trade dice with other players. Maybe I have two brew and no grain and you have no brew and two grain, we could swap a grain and a brew so that both of us are able to brew. But maybe I think you’re in the lead and you brewing will help you more than just doing a simple trade would help me, so instead, you can spend a dollar and change the face of a die. The game plays fast and feels almost like a filler type engine building game, but it’s a ton of fun and who wouldn’t want to drink a bacon nutmeg ale?

6 – Criss Cross
Smallest game on the list and only roll and write on the list. This game is very simple and very dice driven, you are putting down pairs of dice like they’re dominoes onto your sheet, as is everyone else. And you’re trying to get symbols next to each other so that you can score points in both rows and columns. It might seem like there’s an optimal solution that everyone would gravitate towards form the dice rolls, but you are free to put the pair of dice down on on your grid where ever you want, and you get to pick what symbol you want to put in a starting corner, since there are an odd number of squares. So the strategy for the game and plan for it diverges based off of whether or not you can match symbols next to each other at the start. Overall, the game is simple, it plays fast, but it’s a good little filler dice game that I like a lot.

5 – Sagrada
Most of the games on the list, you’re rolling the dice and using them to resolve something. in Sagrada, you’re rolling the dice, then drafting dice, an using them to create a stained glass window. That by itself sounds like a lot of fun, but you have rules as to where you can an can’t place dice. You can’t have the same number or same color orthogonally adjacent to each other (left – right and up – down). Plus at the start of the game, you get to pick a stained glass window that you’re going to make. That is going to mean that you need certain colors in certain spots or certain numbers. So that locks in what you can pick even more so. Can you grab the right dice or get them to come out of the bag so that you can complete your stained glass window?

4 – Dice Throne Season 1/2
While this isn’t a pure dice game, it is one of the games that most heavily uses the dice. You’re rolling them every round, Yahtzee style, in order to hit your opponent and take down their health faster than they can take down yours. What’s interesting about it is that straights or four of a kind, that can mean a different sort of attack for each character. The Pyromancer might set someone on fire so that they are going to take more damage over time. The Shadow Thief might steal the CP (combat points) from another player and deal more damage because of that. And if you’re really lucky or can manipulate a roll so that you end up with all sixes, you can pull of a great ultimate attack. Then, assuming the damage can be defended against, the defending player rolls a single defense roll which might block damage, hit back for a little bit, or do something else, depending on the character. The game shines because of the cards, in some ways, though, because you can improve your attack or defense by playing down upgrade cards. So if you get a great combat upgrade, you might be able to swing for more or open up more options for what you can do on combat. It’s a really fun game and plays fast.

3 – Mansions of Madness 2nd Edition
Mansions of Madness is one of those games where you use the dice to check everything. If you need to see if you know the lore of something and won’t be going more insane, look at your lore skill, grab that many dice and roll them. If you need to fight off a monster from the depths of the oceans, it’ll tell you look at your strength and roll that many dice. The only thing that you don’t use dice for is puzzles, as those are handled by the app or something so simple that anyone could do it. But Mansions of Madness uses the dice well and like a lot of the games in the Arkham line from Fantasy Flight, there are ways to mitigate the dice with rerolls, or you can spend clue tokens to turn clue rolls into successes. I think this is a good example of having just enough mitigation in the dice that it doesn’t feel so lucky, but you’re always hoping for that perfect roll and as you get later in the game and need better rolls with less resources, often, it adds to the pressure.

2 – T.I.M.E. Stories
For what is basically a complicate Choose Your Own Adventure with a bit of escape room thrown in, you get an interesting game with a lot of dice rolling. Some might argue it’s too much dice rolling as you test your skills to see if you can get enough agility to slip a key off the cooks belt or to fight off a crazed monster down in the tunnels. You never know what you’re going to run across that you’ll need to make a roll for. Now, the rolling, like I said, is not some people’s favorite piece to the game, it can be random and it can be quite swingy. So you might make it through a couple of tough encounters with ease and then an easy encounter might just wipe you out and cause you to restart a run. But for me, that’s some of the fun of the game, in the game you aren’t be swapped into the best vessels from that era or location, so you aren’t going to always be the perfect team. Plus there’s the time die which gives some variability to how much time you’re counting down and that can also cause you to have to go on another run. A controversial pick, but one that I enjoy.

1 – Betrayal At House on the Hill
So remember, when I do these Top 10’s, it’s going to include a lot of my favorite games, but dice rolling in Betrayal at House on the Hill tends to be somewhat important. I don’t think that it uses it best out of all the games on the list, but it’s my favorite. In it you’re using dice for combat, but more importantly for the haunt. The haunt is when the game shifts from being cooperative and turns into a fight for survival as one character becomes the betrayer and has their own winning objectives compared to the other players. This roll is known as the haunt roll and you’re trying to roll more than a certain number to keep it from happening. So a poor roll early in the game could cause the haunt to come on faster. While this can be an issue for some, I like that fact that ti’s not as standard a feel as a horror movie because you never know when the haunt is going to happen or if you’ll be prepared to win.

There are a whole lot more games where dice can play a big roll. I actually left Star Wars: Rebellion off the list, because I think that the expansion changes up combat some so that it’s not as luck and dice driven, but it does have a lot of dice in there as well. And you can see that even though some of my favorite games use dice, not all of them is it the highlight of the game. T.I.M.E. Stories is on the list because I don’t mind the dice, but I’m there for the story, whereas other games use the dice really well, like Dice Throne or Mansions of Madness where it’s so key to what you’re doing.

Let me know in the comments below what some of your favorite dice driven games (or at least games where the dice are very important) are. Are there any that you think I need to checkout? Looking at my shelf, I need to get Formula D to the table which has a lot of dice to roll as you race.

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10 – Homebrewers
It’s time to fire up the old brew system and see what sort of beers you can bring to the judges in this quick engine building game with some interesting options for action points. You have a limited number that are determined what they are based off of the dice you roll, which is something you’ll see more of. However, you’re not locked in, you can always trade with other players or spend some money to change to dice to face whatever side you need. This game is quirky fun and has cool pieces and a cool look to it. While the theme might seem a little specific to people who love beer or brew beer, I think it can be enjoyed by most, and like I have said, it plays fast. Definitely a fun game with action points that are dice you’re spending.

9 – Village Attacks
Village Attacks is a fun game where you are the monsters who have been terrorizing the village, and now for some reason they are trying to storm your castle with their pitchforks and torches and just ruin the nice thing that you had going on. In the game you have a certain number of actions as the number of dice that you have, you’ll see that kind of come into play later on the list as well, however, this one is fixed in terms of dice. You roll them hoping to get what you need or making due with what you get. There are plenty of choices for being locked in though, because each scenario is going to lead you in a different direction. Plus, there is some mitigation of the dice if you roll three of a symbol you can reroll all of them. I like the theme of the game and while it has got dark artwork in it, the game actually plays pretty light.

8 – Photosynthesis
This game gives you an allowance of action points that you can save up over rounds if you wanted, but it’s all about using those points to grow and harvest trees at the right time so that you’re setting your trees up to get more sunlight the next turn to get your more points for planting more seeds, growing more trees, and gaining more points. This is an abstract-ish game that works because of the aesthetic of the game. You’re trying to set it up as much as possible so that you’re not being blocked for growing your trees and getting more light while blocking opponents, but if you just focus on blocking, you probably won’t be doing as well overall in gaining the light points that you need. A clever way to get your allowance of action points and a lot of fun to play.

7 – Sword & Sorcery
My favorite dungeon crawler doesn’t work for this list, but Sword and Sorcery does as it gives you regular and combat action points to play with, plus some standard actions that don’t require action points that you can do as well, and you can do them in any order, so it gives you a lot of variety for your turn. Combat action points are simple, it’s just about how many times you can attack, but the regular action points, you can use them to leverage more damage on combat or you can use them to break down locked doors, or other actions. I actually think that the action point system in here is a little bit weak as it’s very much overshadowed by combat. You feel like you’re mainly just using it for aiming, but there’s certainly the possibility to use it in more interesting ways.

6 – Dead of Winter
I like it when games change up how you can do action points or action allowance, it’s not just having a certain number of points to grab from your actions, what you roll on the dice matters for what actions you can do. It helps focus in a turn that could otherwise have almost too many actions to do, and you can get more actions by saving more people, but that might end up costing you in the long run, because you’ll likely need to produce more food, and you’ll definitely need to place more zombies at the end of each round. But having those extra dice can help decrease the likelihood of a bad roll so fairly often it’s worth it to get those extra survivors so that you’re able to pull your weight around the colony. And to get what you need in order to be able to complete your objective.

5 – Star Wars: Rebellion
This game is sneaky with how it let’s you do actions, it doesn’t seem so much like action allowance or selection, but you are really limited to how many leaders you have, and if you’re the Empire and you can capture an enemy leader, it is a big advantage. Plus, you have tough choices as to how you want to allocate your leaders. You pick missions at the start of each round at the same time as your opponent. You can assign as many of your leaders as you want, but if you do that, you won’t be able to move ships or try and thwart the enemies leaders on their missions. So you can limit you actions and how many of your action points you spend on missions to try and stop the other person, but you’ll get less done and not get closer to your goal. It’s a fun system of figuring out how you want to use your action points each round, and you get more as the game progresses.

4 – Mansions of Madness
First of two back to back Fantasy Flight Lovecraftian games. I really do love their system, and I’ll talk about it more with the next game as well. But it just works, they limit your actions and you really feel like you’re getting close and you can do most of what you want, but most of the time it feels like one action, one thing short of what you needed to do on your turn. Good action point games give you just enough to mitigate most of the issues while slowly building up the threat of whatever it might be in the game over time, at least for cooperative games with action selection. And while it’s something that Fantasy Flight has been doing for a long time with the Lovecraftian Mythos games, it still works and offers a great challenge.

3 – Arkham Horror: The Card Game
As said before, Fantasy Flight has a standard thing with their games where you have a limited number of actions that you can take. However, you get to pick from a great variety of actions and all of them feel like it’s a good option but never enough. Whether you’re moving, searching for clues, playing cards, gaining resources, etc., the two actions you get on your turn is never enough. Even when playing the game in story or easy mode, you still feel the pressure as you try and determine what are going to be the most helpful things to do. They have a system for their Lovecraft games, and it’s done well.

2 – Pandemic Legacy
Four actions per turn, but you can do whatever actions you want. This one is what I qualify as an action allowance game simply because every turn you get the same number of actions. It works well in this game, because the four actions that you get, they never feel like quite enough. That’s a common theme for action allowance is that you never have quite enough. Combine this piece of the game into a tense experience as the story unfolds, it does a good job of creating pressure that makes a familiar game be more challenging but also feel fresh again.

1 – Blood Rage
Blood Rage is a round based action limit game where you can spend actions to help with your area control, get monsters onto the board and possibly even gain more action points. This looks like a dudes on a map game with lots of great plastic pieces. But there’s more to it, there’s a strategy in using your action points that starts with the cards that you draft in order not to be out of the round too early and let your opponent have more access to the areas and be able to ramp up their number of troops and actions early on in the game. And some strategies might need a lot of action points while others are going to be more focused on maintaining a board presence, so it doesn’t just lock you into trying to get those points.

The most interesting part about this was actually figuring out what qualified as an action point or action allowance. For some of them, you can spend a whole lot of action points at once, but it might limit you in the future, Photosynthesis for example can go from having 15 sun points one round and 0 the next round depending on where the sun is facing on the board. So I think when I started this out, I thought that Action Points were going to be a little bit more straight forward, but it really is a mechanic that games use in a wide way.

What are some of your favorite games that use action points or action allowance as one of their main mechanics? Did I forget any big ones in your opinion? Are there some that I should checkout?

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