1. Gloomhaven
We have a change up from what I remember as being my #1 last year, but Gloomhaven has gotten to the table so much, and I’m really loving it. The story is a lot of fun in the game, and I really like the combat in the game. Playing two cards and then using the top half of one card and the bottom half of the other card makes for some interesting strategy and changing characters keeps the game feeling nice and fresh. It is a beast of a game to get set-up, move around, and use, but we have it down now so we can get scenarios set-up fast and it doesn’t seem to suffer because of that.

2. Pandemic Legacy
Was a pretty easy choice for the top two. Pandemic Legacy Seasons 1 and 2 just hold up so well. These are big experience games that are a ton of fun. Because they are legacy games they can’t be replayed, but it is fine, after playing through the stress and ups and downs of the games you feel like you’ve gotten your money’s worth from the game. How the story unfolds and the game mechanics progress just makes the games and systems tie together and work really well.

3. Dresden Files Cooperative Card Game
This game just tells stories of the Dresden Files well, and there is so much tension in the game play and when you win it feels good. The limited resources and card management works really well. The game also works really well as a solo game and they keep the tension with every number of players. They also keep on releasing expansions for further books in the series that keeps the game even more playable.

5. Smallworld
There are so many game options I want to put down here. For right now Smallworld holds the spot as it’s a game that is always one I’ll play. The expansions for it are a lot of fun and keep the game feeling fresh, but even without an expansion, it still feels unique with the different combinations of races and powers. The high conflict and area control of the game could be mean, but because of the artwork and style of game that it is, you can’t be annoyed and someone when they try and take you off the map, because you can do that again in a turn or two.

Honorable Mentions:
Xenoshyft: Onslaught – A great deck building game that actually has a point for the deck building.
Sushi Go! Party – Fast card drafting game with really cute artwork.
Sagrada – A fun dice drafting game that looks great on the table.
T.I.M.E. Stories – Only played on scenario in it, but it’s a lot of fun and gives you a fun feeling of role playing and puzzle solving as you go along.
Arkham Horror LCG – A good story based Lovecraft game with very puzzle like mechanics.

It’s been a good year for gaming and trying new games. What are your current top 5 favorite games? Have you gotten a chance to try any new games this past year that would have broken into your top 5?

With people who think of Monopoly or other classic games, what games can you recommend that might take them further into a journey of board gaming? I’m going to try and take a stab at what classic games can be replaced or have a game that can be used as an advancement into the board gaming hobby.

If You Like Clue
T.I.M.E. Stories or the Escape Room board games, Unlock and Exit are two of the more popular ones would be good options. These games are cooperative, which might be something different, but there is still the puzzle aspect of trying to solve the escape room or in T.I.M.E. Stories trying to solve the case presented to you.  T.I.M.E. Stories is my recommendation here, however, there are games like Chronicles of Crime and Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game that if they are looking to solve a murder, might work better, but I haven’t played them yet.

If You Like Chess
Now, I personally think Chess is a really interesting deep game that I’m not good at. It probably doesn’t need to be replaced, but if you have someone who likes Chess, there are a lot of other abstract board games that they might like as well. Onitama is my recommendation here. It’s a fast strategy game where you can have any of your pieces do one of two moves you have in your hand, however, whatever move you use goes into the middle and your opponent will get it in their hand after their move. The game has a ton of really interesting strategy to it as you try and eliminate the others players “king” piece or get your “king” to the opposite side of the board. From there, you can branch into a variety of other abstract games, but Onitama has a nice Chess-like feel to it.

If You Like Risk
I only have one replacement for this game, and that’s Smallworld. Smallworld takes the area control and conquest aspects of Risk and makes it so that you can’t hide in Australia. The conflict in Smallworld is high, but everyone is in conflict, so it isn’t like you should gang up on a single person. The variable powers of the races and then random ability that they get paired with makes this a fun game. It also almost eliminates the die rolling luck aspect of the game as well and the game play is so much faster as it has a limited number of rounds.

If You Like Scrabble
Personally, I think that Scrabble has aged quite well, but can be a bit slow as people try and figure out words. My replacement for Scrabble is Unspeakable Words. The game has a Cthulhu theme on it for no good reason, other than to be silly, but there is luck involved in this game, and the ability to make a big word isn’t always the most useful. And even if you are falling behind and have gone insane, you are still part of the game. It’s a simple word game, there are others out there that I want to try as well, but for someone who likes Scrabble, but it’s too long or they aren’t the best at word placement, Unspeakable Words could be a fun time with them.

If You Like Sorry
Sorry has some very frustrating rules as you race around the board and get sent backwards and then as you are about ready to win, you have to sit there until you roll the right number. It’s a bad game that ends up with people annoyed at each other. I actually have two recommendations, and I haven’t played either of them. The first is CamelUp, it’s a camel racing game through the desert where instead of a person having their own camel, you bet on which camel is going to be ahead at time and roll dice, but if a camel lands on another camel, they stack, and if the bottom camel moves, all of those on top of them move. The other one is similar, but it’s auto racing and Downforce is the name of the game. In this game, you do have your own car, but you bet on peoples cars if yours isn’t doing too well, and you have difficult decisions to make, because you have a card you have to play on your turn, and it will probably move your car, but will also move other peoples cars, so you have to pick which card you play carefully.

If You Like Trivial Pursuit
I have so many issues with this game, one person can simply be better at trivia and run away with this game. And not just that, you might not get the pie piece you need. Most trivia games are going to suffer from the one person knows more issue, so what is a trivia based game that might not do that? Wits & Wagers is my choice. In the game, everyone is answering a question, like how many yards does the record rusher in the NFL have? Now, Gary might be the trivia expert, so his number might end up being the closest, but everyone writes down a number ,and then you bet on which one you think is the closest without going over. So even if Gary always does the best, you can bet on Gary and you can play as many or as few rounds as you want.

If You Like Monopoly
I’m not going to say that someone is a bad person for liking monopoly. I know that a lot of people have fond-ish (or horrible) memories from playing it growing up, because there weren’t that many game options out there. But there are a lot more now.  Monopoly is a tough game to suggest a replacement for, because there’s the buying property aspect, there’s a collecting set aspect, there’s the collecting rent aspect, and what is really the aspect that people like in the game? My choice is going to be considered an odd one, but I think that Ticket to Ride can be a decent Monopoly replacement. This is especially true if you’re playing at higher player counts. There’s a card set collection aspect, there are locations that you’re getting to, and there is a take that aspect that you can block someone out of a place that they wanted to go. Definitely not a perfect replacement for Monopoly, but I think it’s a game that someone who likes Monopoly would enjoy.

What other classic games need to be replaced? Are there any games you think would make sense to replace or to be suggested in place of the ones listed that I’ve missed? If so, comment them below.

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Are you ready for your first mission?

That’s the simple pitch of T.I.M.E. Stories, a board game in which you play as agents of this organization who are going back in time or across the multiverse to stop catastrophic events from happening. You start out as rookie agents, and you are given a mission to go back to an insane asylum in 1920s France. There is some event that is going to take place there, and you have to unravel the mystery and figure out how to stop it. Each character’s consciousness is placed into a receptacle — in this case, so as not to raise suspicions, the receptacles are some of the asylum’s patients. Now you are racing against the clock to solve the mystery and stop the time event from happening. The good news is that if your receptacle dies or you run out of time and have to be sent back to your own body, you can always jump back to the same spot in time and try again, but those trips aren’t cheap, and it will affect your overall score.

As you can imagine, there are some crazy things going on and twists and turns that you need to figure out over the course of the game. And if you’re like the team that we took in, there are going to be clues and puzzles that you just get stumped on. T.I.M.E. Stories reminds me some of the Unlock and Exit games, which are essentially escape rooms in a box. While those are focused on escaping most of the time, this game is focused on solving a mystery. And while Unlock and Exit are limited in their scope and storytelling, T.I.M.E. Stories can tell a story through multiple locations and the events that unfold. There are a few other unique things about T.I.M.E. Stories, the first being the game-saving system. We didn’t use this, but it is possible to save the game partway through playing so that you can pick it back up again later — this is made possible with the way the box has been created and laid out. The second thing is the multiple run system that you can employ if you run out of time or if all the characters die. This gives it more of a video game feel than with Unlock or Exit, because with those, you just go until you are done and then you are done with the game for good. With T.I.M.E. Stories, it would be possible to play multiple sessions with no problem.

Finally, one of the cool things I want to talk about is the scenario we played, the Asylum scenario. This is the one that comes in the base game, and it is meant to get you up to speed. It can still be tricky, however, so don’t take it lightly. There are also a lot more scenarios for the game out there to be purchased, and I’m excited to get some of them soon, because I’m ready to play again. These scenarios are all over the map, with some seemingly set in Ancient Egypt, a fantasy world, and the year 1992. This is one of the coolest aspects of the game to me, because the possibilities for scenarios is pretty limitless because of this. And the fact that it’s a board game, with a board, decks of cards, combats, challenges, etc., makes it feel more substantial and meaty than the Unlock and Exit games.

Let’s talk a little bit about your receptacle and the stats that you have to play around with, which are based on the scenario. In the Asylum (and all of this is outside-of-the-box stuff that you will know before you start playing, so these details aren’t spoilers), I was placed first into a cocaine addict and then a cannibal girl. Each character has special abilities, as well as some stats; for example, deftness, glibness, and strength(ness). You use strength to fight and probably break open stuff, glibness for all the talking (and sweet-talking) you do, and deftness for stealing things, rummaging around looking for clues, things of that nature. You roll dice with the hope of rolling as many blue stars, or successes, as possible, and of avoiding the red skulls, or failures/damage. If you are up against a dangerous foe, they can do damage to you — just a point at a time, but you don’t have many life points to start with. If the number of red skulls you roll combined with the number of red skull shields the enemy has is higher than your character’s defense number, your character will take a hit. This gives the game a logical way to have a character die, and there’s a good way for characters to come back, too — the dead character comes back in automatically after 7 more time units have been spent. This makes it so no one is sitting out of the game too long; that person can still take part in the discussion, as well.

Next, let’s talk about time units. I covered most of how the game works in the previous paragraph, but there is another key part to this game, and that is the time units. You spend time moving around the scenario’s map — in this case, you’re exploring the various rooms and grounds of the asylum. The group moves as one unit, which is maybe not an ideal part of the game, but it allows players to take each turn as a group so that everyone is involved, which is an ideal part of the game. These rooms are split into several cards — by spending one time unit, you can explore aroom, placing as many people at a location as you want, but you can only explore one card per pawn, and you determine where your pawn goes in the room. You might want to explore the same room multiple times, and each time you go to another part of the room, you have to spend another time unit. So that’s one way you have the clock counting down on you, but the other way is that when you move locations, you roll a die to see how much time you spend — it’s possible to get only a single time unit knocked off as you change rooms, but it’s also possible you’ll lose up to three. But that’s part of the stress of the game, and one of the strengths is that you have a timer that you can watch count down.

Finally, one thing I wanted to touch on is the multiple runs. I know I mentioned this before, but want to explain it more fully here. When we played, we had to play the scenario three times in a row to be able to beat it (a.k.a., we did poorly at the game). But the game is fast to reset between times playing, and once we failed the mission a second time, even though we’d been playing for a while, we wanted to finish it off. All in all, I think it took us about three hours to play through the scenario three times, which isn’t bad. In the future, I would be very tempted to split it up so that the third play doesn’t just happen immediately, because it did get a little bit long, as we already knew a lot of the story by that point. However, that did allow us to speed through some of the first part and just select a few things to do and a few to skip, until we realized that the things we’d skipped might be important as well. So if you have a gaming group that regularly gets together, with up to four people in said group, T.I.M.E. Stories scenarios could easily be played over multiple sessions.

This is a very good game. The pieces are nice, and the game itself if very aesthetically pleasing. I don’t really have any knock against the mechanics, as they make a lot of sense as to how they work. T.I.M.E. Stories also falls somewhere between roleplaying and a board game. If you wanted to, since you are inhabiting a receptacle in the game, you could pull a Jack Black from Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and really get into character, acting like a person inhabiting the body of another person. I think most people would enjoy this game; however, I can see it having some adult themes at times, and I know with the most recent scenario, they did warn people about that. It is also a pretty intense game in a great way, but it could be too stressful for some people. Overall, though, I would recommend this game, and if you are turned off by the price of it and the expansions, see if you can find two groups who want to use the same copy of the game, and that will make the cost a whole lot more palatable.

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

Have you had a chance to play T.I.M.E. Stories before? If so, how did you like the game? If not, does it seem like something that would interest you?

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