As normal, I am using Pub Meeple to do my rankings. You can find their ranking engine here.

Ranking New Games 35 through 5

35 – KADO
34 – Gold’n Crash
33 – Castellion
32 – Harmonies
31 – Pokemon Old Maid
30 – Karvi
29 – Panda Spin
28 – Unsurmountable
27 – Stalk Exchange
26 – The Royal Limited
25 – At the Helm
24 – Ancient Realm
23 – SpaceShipped
22 – ROVE: Results-Oriented Versatile Explorer
21 – Ext: The Game – Lord of the Rings: Shadows over Middle-earth
20 – Circus Flohcati
19 – A Nice Cuppa
18 – Toy Battle
17 – PUSH
16 – Knister
15 – Luxor
14 – Crafting the Cosmos
13 – The Architects of Amytis
12 – 6 nimmt!
11 – Imhotep
10 – Pyradmido: Forgotten Treasures
9 – One-Hit Heroes
8 – Fromage
7 – Schadenfreude
6 – Symbiose

Quick Thoughts

There are a lot of great games in this section. Everything from Old Maid up I’ll gladly play. And I mainly will gladly play old maid because my kid likes it. Also, I realized I have played old maid before growing up, but I never ranked it. So maybe shouldn’t be on the list.

There are some games where I wonder if they would move higher in other circumstances. Panda Spin, for example, at 29 feels low. But it’s also just okay on Board Game Arena. Would it be a better game in person. The downside of that one is downtime as you might not be able to partake in tricks. But that downtime would be way less.

Also there is a huge clump of Button Shy solo games there in the middle. I like those games. There weren’t any where I thought they were actively annoying or not that great to play. At the same time, there are some that are better than the others, and because it’s just 18 cards, they all fall into that similar feeling category, especially the ones that I’ve played on Malts and Meeples thus far.

Top 5 New Games of Q1

5. Pirates of Maracaibo

This game is great. I love everything that is going on in it and I also love how fast the game is. I wrote up a review of this one already and you can read that here. Just a quick recap, there is a lot going on, but the turns are simple. And there are a ton of ways to explore scoring. I like being able to spend time figuring out new ways to score. And each way to score really does feel good, but you can’t only focus in on one, most likely, you are going to need to get a few working together to do well in the game.

4. The Guild of Merchant Explorers

The next one is another one that I’ve done a review on already. You can read my review for The Guild of Merchant Explorers here. This one I love because I can play it so quickly at two players on BGA, as long as the other player is active. And it is a different puzzle each time you play as you get unique cards for each era. And the scoring objectives, which can easily swing the game, help give the game that more variety as well.

3. Zenith

Yes, another BGA game with a review, but the final of the BGA games, is Zenith and you can read the review here. Zenith is a very fun two player game. And while there are other two player games on the list, the lowest at 34, Zenith stands above with the variety of ways to win the game. It really feels like such a great back and forth two player battle. And that tug of war element where you are trying to get the planets to your side and figuring out how to do that best is great.

2. Clank! Catacombs

Next we have Clank!: Catacombs. We already know that I love Clank in all it’s forms. I’ve streamed the digital app this year as well, but Clank!: Catacombs is probably the best version of Clank!. And that’s really driven by the fact that the game is going to change every time. You don’t know how the tiles are going to come out, and you could decide to build things so it goes off into the distance. That is going to make it more replayable without any expansions, and I think it also makes it easier to have expansions.

1. Marvel Dice Throne: X-Men

The final one is another game that I’ve kind of already played, much like Clank!, but it’s Marvel Dice Throne: X-Men. And this one is great for me because it has two of my favorite players. Beyond that, it is still just more Dice Throne, and I love Dice Throne. I need to pull out my other Marvel characters and have everyone battle together and see who comes out on top. That’s another great thing about Dice Throne, it’s really built for a tournament or competitive play. I wonder if there are any shops around me who are doing the Dice Throne league, that could be something fun to join.

Final Thoughts

That’s all of the new to me games that I’ve played this year. And I know that I’m going to play even more. I am trying to learn new games each week on board game arena and I’ve done a very good job of that thus far. It might become harder later, but I think that I can do it.

Based off of these games, are there any that I should be looking out for in 2025 to tryout? Obviously these aren’t all the games that I’ve played, so I might have played your suggestion already. But let me know those down in the comments. And let me know which games you’ve tried for the first time this year?

Looking around me, I have games like Knarr, Finca, Thunder Rolls, Bomb Busters and a whole lot more that I’ve had come in this year. And there are kickstarters as well, like Dragon Eclipse, Lore, Star Realms, Andromeda’s Edge, and The Dark Quarter that I need to get played as well. So I’m at no shortage of games to get played. And I hope to get a lot of those games played this year, plus the oh so many more that have been on my shelf of opportunity for even longer.

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How To Play The Royal Limited

In The Royal Limited you play four turns and you need to get all of your cards, or all but one into your train either as passengers or as train cars to win at the highest level of the game. If you score four or more points, you lose the game. And two or three points, you’re just starting out as a conductor, so you’ll get better.

Trains and Passengers

How do you get cards out as train cars or passengers? Both are fairly simple to do, but you need train cars before you need passengers so we’ll talk about that one first. To play out a train you pick the card you want to play. The first one can be any card. Then you discard cards totally the number on the train car, so if it’s a three, three cards. Each additional card follows that same rule plus the additional one that it can’t match the color or number of the previous train car.

For playing passengers, most of them are very simple. You either need to match the color or the number to play a passenger onto that train car. There are two VIP passengers as well per game and they have additional special rules. So before they can be placed, you need to meet their conditions. They might have a specific color or be wild when it comes to placement. Each train car only can have a single passenger.

Activating Train Cars

When you play out a passenger you then activate the ability on the train that you play the passenger to. You must do the ability on the card if you are able. There are even some that are more specific than that. They give an ability and then a “next” ability. You must do that ability next and complete. If you are not able to complete that ability, then your turn ends and you draw back up to five cards in your hand.

When you turn does end, either because you can’t play more cards or because you don’t have any or don’t want to, you draw back up to five cards. When you tick down your timer. Then you end a turn and would begin your next turn and the “Train Departed” is at the top of the card, the position marking the turn, the game is over. You then count up the number of train cars/passengers that you didn’t use and the number of VIP passengers you didn’t get played and that determines your score.

What Doesn’t Work

Honestly, I don’t really have complaints about this one. The train maybe gets a little bit wide but with the cards overlapping I think I could fit it onto a TV tray. And that’s about it that I can find that might be an issue, and that’s only a very specific issue of it might not work on an airplane tray, but it also might as I haven’t tested it out.

What Works

Firstly the speed of this game is amazing. I talk while I play and I do intros, grab a drink, and then did some mini thoughts at the end of the video, and it’s a 38 minute video for five games. So the game just flies by, I know it says twenty minutes, I think it’s a ten minute max game.

I really like how the VIP passengers are double sided. I thought that maybe it would start to feel the same with the passengers, but with eight total passengers there are a ton of combinations that you can play. And the more challenging those VIP passengers are, I think it makes the game itself more interesting because I want to or need to to win the game, figure out how to get at least one VIP into play.

And I like the abilities on the cards. Sometimes they are good, and that’s great for you. But sometimes you look at it, especially final round, and it’s discard a card or put a card on top of the deck. Well, you do both of those, you are at a minimum of two cards that you won’t be able to play, and then you’ll just be a beginner conductor.

Final Thoughts on The Royal Limited

I’m skipping the who this is for. If you like solo games, you probably know from the description if you’ll like this game. If you know someone who likes solo games, it’s cheap, get them it and see if they like it.

But I did very much enjoy this game. I think one of the elements that I really liked is the simplicity of play. The powers are the main thing you need to remember, and that’s just part of playing a passenger is using the cars power. It’s not like some of the Button Shy solo games where it’s a bit challenging to keep it straight in the tiny rule books.

This game is fast and easy to learn. That is always going to work for a solo game for me. And I didn’t feel like the challenge was too light. I need to think about what I’m doing, you saw me rewind a move once or twice. But it is not a game where you need to think and agonize over everything. So I see it as that kind of palette cleanser solo game. When you want that brain reset or refresh to happen, I would grab The Royal Limited.

My Grade: B+
Strategy: B+
Luck: C-

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