Top 10 “It’s Been Too Long” Board Games

10. Xenoshyft

This one might be surprisingly low for some people. You know that I like this game a lot. But it’s low because I have played it a bunch. So while I haven’t played this deck building tower defense game recently, it’s one that I have played.

In this game you are cooperating with others to defend your base against alien bug attacks. You do this by creating a line of troops with armor and weapons to defend your sector of the base. Each player is going to defend their sector of the base, but you can help your teammates by giving them troops if you have too many and they don’t have enough. Or using items like grenades to blow up alien monsters or medpacs to heal them. I love how cooperative this game is, and challenging. Which makes me come back to it again and again.

9. Paper Dungeon

This is another game that I really love. But it’s lower on the list against because I’ve played it a bunch. But this is a dungeon crawler game that is a roll and write. You are exploring a dungeon, fighting monsters, finding bosses and trying to deal with those, all while leveling up your heroes and crafting items and health potions.

This is a roll and write game so the theme only comes through so much. But it’s really fun because there is a lot to do in the game. And this is one that I actually played through the whole “campaign” for it on Malts and Meeples YouTube. So you can checkout that video below. But the combinations just work so great that I really love this game, and I have an expansion for it that I need to get played.

8. Ship Shape

This is a funny little game but it’s been too long since I played it. It’s all about being the best pirate and not having too much contraband, but also getting that treasure as well. The main thing that sets this apart from other games, and puts it onto the list, is that you are bidding for what you want, but you can’t see everything you might need to know.

The game has you stacking tiles onto your cargo hold. Each tile is going to cover up certain parts of the hold. Now, all the tiles are stacked on top of each other as you bid, as well. So if you want the top tile you need to bid the highest number. But you can see some down the stack to know what might be on some of the lower tiles and if they might fit your hold better. But it’s unlikely that you can see everything, so do you risk it and bid lower. Of course, it all depends on what the other players bid as well to see if you get what you want or not.

7. Terraforming Mars Ares Expedition

This one falls into that category of I’ve played it a number of times. So do I need to play it again as much as some, probably not. But when it comes to engine building games, Ares Expedition is a great game. And I know that I have new content for cooperative and solo play to add to the game. As well as objectives to add to the game as well, if I want, so there is new stuff.

But I really love how Ares Expedition works. In this game every player is going to choose an action to do that round, and you choose it in secret. Then you reveal and you do the actions a particular order so it is building first and drawing cards, I believe at the end. Everyone plays every action that someone picked. But on the action that you picked, you get a bonus. And it’s possible that multiple people, or everyone, might pick the same action. So one round it might only be one action, which is interesting.

The game is then about building out an engine to gain points. You do this by terraforming Mars as well as getting points from cards as you build out that engine. The game is not super short, though, I’ve heard, shorter than Terraforming Mars. And it’s so much fun to play that I don’t mind it being a longer play.

6. Trailblazers

There are a few games on the list that I’m not sure why I haven’t played them recently Trailblazers is one of them. The big reason right now is that I don’t know where it is in my game collection. I know I own it. I know that I like it. But where is it, I’m not sure.

In this game you complete three different types of routes as you are out hiking, biking, or kayaking. Each of them creates a loop from the trailhead back to the start. You do this by drafting cards and playing them out. You draft over four rounds. And on the first round you only have one of the three trailheads out in play. Then the next round you add another and so on until the final round all of them are out. This helps you focus your building efforts a bit more.

But it’s fun because you gain points for all the sections of a trail. And sometimes a trail can cross itself and that gives you more points, or be crossed by another trail for more points. The game is simple and easy to play. And it’s not one that I find too stressful to play which is nice as well.

5. Calico

I’m not sure why Calico hasn’t been played in about two years. I really like Calico, though, I need to play Cascadia. The theme for Calico, for me, works better than Cascadia. We might have three cats in our house.

But this is a great tile placement game and I love the pattern matching element to the game. I think that the game is so much fun as you try and get matching colors together, matching patterns together, as well as the objectives that you set for yourself. And getting points for matching patterns to get cats, or colors to get buttons is fun.

The objectives are where the real puzzle and tension of the game comes into play. It might be something like AAA BBB and another one might be A BB CCC. You read those, first one as the example, as three of one color or pattern and three of another color or pattern surrounding that scoring objective. But if you can manage to get three of two colors and three of two patterns between those two colors, you score more points. So there are lots of ways to score points but it’s a really good tight puzzle of a game.

4. Chronicles of Drunagor

This is the only big campaign game on the list. I certainly could add more games like Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon, but I have completed that game. With Chronicles of Drunagor, I played one session and that is it. So I want to play more of the game because I really enjoyed that one play. The issue, I found, is that it wasn’t great for streaming. I want to stream big campaign games maybe for a couple of hours. But because of how Drunagor works, with setting stuff up often mid game, it made it harder. But I think I can play it in shorter bursts, especially if I leave it set-up.

I really like the core mechanism(s) to the game. Firstly there is darkness. Darkness is a negative for the players. So you need to keep ahead of it. I like that it is an element that you use as a timer for the game. It means you can’t sit back too long and heal up or anything like that.

The other thing is the activation cubes. Each character starts out with some cubes of various colors. You use that color to activate that color of action. Then you cover it up. You aren’t able to use that action again until you remove all the cubes. And when you remove all the cubes, you block off one of them “for good” with a black cube. Yes, you can get it back, but that is an action and turn in and of itself.

3. Tesseract

Tesseract is a game that I played twice completely at Gen Con in 2023 and once I got to sit in on the last few turns and take over for a person. The theme of the game is fun, though it only comes through so much. In the game a cube has come to Earth, and it is shrinking. If you and your team are unable to crack the code and understand what the Tesseract is before it disappears a singularity will envelop the Earth, or something like that.

The game is all about managing this cube of dice. It’s going to shrink each turn, of Pandemic like in you do your good stuff then something bad happens. And you need to create collections of dice and numbers to research all the different colors/symbols on the dice and their numbers. But to play out those dice to get it closer to the finish, you create sets or runs of dice that you can use. So it’s all about getting the right dice and manipulating the dice well.

2. The Great Split

Who is the best collector of arts and other things? Well, that could be you in The Great Split. This games main mechanism is simply, I split, you choose. And you use that for set collection to score different types of artwork and literature.

But let’s talk about that main mechanism. What does it mean when I say “I split, you choose”. It means that we all have a collection of cards. I split that collection of cards into two groups. You pick one of the groups to take for yourself and I get the other one back. So when I create that split of cards, I want to create a division that you’ll want, but is just okay for you, and one that I want, but isn’t too good for me that you take it so I can’t have it. It’s a great mechanism, and The Great Split makes it the focus of it’s game.

1. Ready, Set, Bet

I love the chaos of this game. It’s amazingly fun doing the real time bidding on a horse race. And it’s also a blast being the person who is calling the race as well. The whole thing is just chaos and good in a great way. However, I do think you need the right group for it and a large enough group. That is what I’ve been missing for it recently and why it hasn’t been played.

So let’s talk about how this game works. All players have bidding chips. And one player is the caller of the race. That player is going to be rolling two dice and moving the horses down the track. While they are doing that in real time, the players are throwing out chips onto different bidding spots. These spots are for winning, showing, and placing. But also for extra bets like the 7 horse finishing ahead of all blue horses or things like that. You get money at the end of each round, and the player with the most money wins.

Final Thoughts

There are so many more board games that I could put on this list. If it’s not obvious, I love board games. And it’s fun to see what new games come out and play them. But sometimes I really want to get back to some classic ones that I’ve enjoyed a lot. It’s something that I need to make space for in my gaming. So while I’m getting very close to 50 new games for the year, I also need to play through some of these games on the list and enjoy them again.

What are some games that you want to get back to the table?

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100 through 91
90 through 81
80 through 71

Top 100 Games (of all time) 2024 Edition – 70 through 61

70. Sagrada

• Published by Floodgate Games in 2017
• Build the most beautiful stained glass window

This game is just a great drafting game experience. The ease of play is wonderful as well because you draft a die and place it while other people are going on drafting their own dice. Especially with the 5-6 player expansion, which can be worked into the lower player counts, it makes it so you don’t need to spend time with what others are doing. But both ways to draft the dice and place the dice are mainly the same and really good. Plus the way you need to play the dice to not have colors or numbers adjacent makes a great puzzle.

Buy Sagrada

69. Mesozooic

• Published by Z-Man Games in 2018
• Slide your dino-themed park together in this light filler game

Mesozooic has a couple of great elements to the game. Firstly it’s drafting, and I really love drafting. But the game is more than that. You also need to complete a slide puzzle. You see you draft 11 cards and shuffle them up to create a 3 tall and 4 wide grid with an open spot. Then you slide them around frantically for 45 seconds like a slide puzzle to get the best dino-park that you can. It’s silly, light, and a very fun time.

Buy Mesozooic

68. 7 Wonders Duel

• Published by Repos Production in 2015
• Draft cards and build wonders in this head to head game

I like this game better than 7 Wonders. Mainly because I played 7 Wonders a few times at two and it isn’t a good game. 7 Wonders Duel is great that way, as expected. But the game is more than just a better version, I think that the drafting is very clever. I love the trying to avoid revealing a card that is good for your opponent. And some of the cards being face down so unknown until they are revealed. And the two side ways to win with science and military add in tension to the game as well. You can’t just draft your best engine, even though you want to.

Buy 7 Wonders Duel

67. Icecool

• Published by Brain Games in 2016
• Help your penguins sneak out of class and get fish in this dexterity game

Yes, the theme of Icecool is that simple and I love it for me. I love the flicking element of the game, it’s just fun. And I really enjoy the silliness of the game. This is one of my favorites for a late night of gaming. Just sit around and flick penguins and have a laugh. It is possible to get very good at the game, but it’s also a game where players can just have a great shot by pure luck. To me that is what makes it a fun game for all ages.

Buy Icecool

66. Super Fantasy Brawl

• Published by Mythic Games in 2022
• Choose your team and face off against an opponent in an arena

This game is coming back, kind of. I say kind of, I expect that most of the game is going to be the same, but CMON bought it from the now defunct Mythic Games. So I want to see what CMON is going to do with it. Because I love the simplicity of the game. Super Fantasy Brawl has you activate three different colors of cards each round. And you can do some on defense as well, but that means you won’t do as much on your turn. Then you either try to knock out your opponents for trophies or complete goals, or most likely, do both. The game is strategic but also fast and easy to play.

Follow Super Fantasy Brawl: Reborn

65. Trailblazers

• Published by Bitewing Games in 2023
• Create the best hiking, biking, and kayaking routes

Another drafting game on the list. This is the last one for this time, but there are four and possible five if you count drafting your team in Super Fantasy Brawl. In this one you draft cards to create trails. I love the trail creation aspect of the game because you really need to strategize as to how you’re going to do that. And I like how the game becomes more complex in your trail creation throughout as you add in other hubs that you need to start and leave from for each of the three routes.

Buy Trailblazers

64. Mind Up!

• Published by Pandasaurus Games in 2023
• Play the right number to collect and create sets of colors

This game is so easy to learn and play. I actually wrote about it yesterday in that exact context, so you can checkout the article after this. But it’s simply play out a card simultaneously with the other players. Then you look to see who played the lowest number, they get the lowest number from the middle. And after that it’s about trying to get the colors you want into the highest scoring column you have. The whole thing is just a really easy to play and simple time. I explain it better in the video, by the way.

Buy Mind Up!

63. So Clover!

• Published by Repost Productions in 2021
• Can you find the right pair of words based off of one word clues?

This game is always tricky for me to explain. Basically you have cards with four words, one on each side. And you have four of them making this little four by four grid. Each side is going to have two words, if that all makes sense and you’re picturing it. You need to create a one word clue so people can guess and put it back into that same order. Not that hard, well, it is when the words don’t connect at all. And there is going to be a mystery fifth card added in. But if you give the right clues you can lead people down the right path to recreate it.

Buy So Clover!

62. The Castles of Burgundy

• Published by alea in 2019
• Take a new kingdom and turn it into a bustling land

A game that I wouldn’t have expected that I like. But I really enjoy The Castles of Burgundy, a game of using dice to purchase and place new things into your land. As well as using them to sell goods, and get workers that let you manipulate your dice. There is a bunch going on and I feel like I need to nail down my strategy for it. But I really enjoy what this offers and it’s a new type of puzzle for me to spend time diving into as a game. I even have the fancy version coming that alea did with Awaken Realms.

Buy The Castles of Burgundy

61. Letter Jam

• Published by Czech Games Edition in 2019
• Work together to figure out what everyone’s letters are because you can’t see your own

If you know what Hanabi is that will help with it. But Letter Jam is a game where you can’t see the letters that form your word. Other players can see one of them at a time but they can’t see theirs. So you give clues to help people narrow down what their letters might be for their jumbled word. Of course everyone needs to get theirs figured out by the end of the game, but it’s cooperative so the challenge is great but fun to tackle.

Buy Letter Jam

Upcoming Streams

Just a reminder on my streaming schedule.

• Monday night, time varies, I play different small solo games, though I might be looking to start up a campaign again.
• Wednesday at 9 PM central is going to continue my Top 100 Games (of all time) 2024 Edition for another six weeks. After that expect this to be when I play my small games.
• Friday at 9 PM central my wife and I are streaming a playthrough of Baldur’s Gate 3

The best way to know when we go live, though is to subscribe and click that notification bell. I can’t promise, and in fact it’s pretty unlikely, that I’ll have events to click on ahead of time. Though I do want to get better at it. I hope that you can join a stream and hop into the chat.

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Top 5 Board Games of 2023

5. Trailblazers

Let’s start out with Trailblazers. This is a fun route building game as you create the pathways for hiking, biking, and kayaking out in the wild. Each of them needs to start and end at the rental or trailhead locations for their respective one. To get a biking trail you need to start and end at the biking trailhead, for example. And the question is how long can you get your various routes, because you can connect up to four trails to each trailhead.

Mechanically this looks like card drafting. You pick out two cards from your hand and then you add them to the trails that you want. Each of them has different overlapping routes so you can connect them in a few different ways. But, of course, these cards don’t only have a single type of trail on them, they can have multiple types. So can you get them laid out right, though, you can overlap nor to trail types need to match. For a full biking trail, though, it needs to only be biking path on that trail.

4. World Wonders

Next up in World Wonders from Arcane Wonders and actually a Brazilian company. World Wonders is a game about building up an ancient society and getting the conditions met to put a wonder on your board. Well, it’s a tile laying game where you need tiles arranged in certain ways to get cool wooden wonders which give you points.

I like this game a lot for it’s action system. In World Wonders you get money each round. And that money goes for buying roads or buying buildings, mainly. But the big thing you can buy with your money are the wonders. The wonders are one of the main ways that you get points. You do for surrounding tiles you’ve played as well, but it is mainly for the wonders. To get a wonder, though, it costs all of your coins. So however many you have left, that is going to be the cost. It’s a great question of when you are going to make the jump.

And I like the tile placement in the game. It’s fairly restrictive in how you can place them. You either need to play it next to a road or another tile. And wonders don’t count as tiles. So you need to think about how you’re placing everything. And how you can reduce gaps in your placements to try and get things surround. And the tiles also offer advancements, going up tracks. As you push up those tracks that can trigger the end of the game. Which is a nice alternate end.

3. Tesseract

Next up we have Tesseract, a game that I had an amazing time with at Gen Con. The group of people I played it with were a ton of fun. And Tesseract is the type of cooperative game that I really enjoy. It’s a cooperative game where each player has special powers. And that is something I very much like in games. But beyond that, it is a game where you can lose in multiple ways, much like Pandemic.

In Tesseract, you play as researchers who are studying a tesseract cube that came to Earth. And you need to solve it’s puzzle before it all disappears and, well, destroys the Earth. It’s a bit absurd and mainly mechanical. But it works on the Pandemic like system of do a number of actions and then bad things happen. How do you beat it? You need to place out one through six of four different colors of dice. To do that, you need to play it from a run or a set. It’s very mechanical that way.

But I still really like how it plays out. There is always pressure. And each player has their own special ability. What I am able to do on my turn is unique from what you can do. So you need to work together to get everything taken care of. And there are elements of the game, like trading dice, that do help with that. And I like that as you get closer to the end game and the game winning, but you complete columns of dice, let place all four fours, you get boosts to help you. It’s a really rewarding system.

2. Forest Shuffle

Next up we have Forest Shuffle another nature themed game. Forest Shuffle is one that I really grew to like at Gen Con and was really happy to get my hands onto it. It’s a tableau building card game of building out a forest. That’s the basics of it, you have a hand of cards that you balancing playing cards from and paying for those cards with cards from your hand, with drawing up more cards. I like that system.

Then the scoring itself is a real mixed back of what you can do for scoring. Almost everything you play down gives you points. You have the most trees in your forest, well, there is a card that scores points off of that. One of the birds scores points for the bugs you have, another for the diversity of birds, or a tree for how many of that tree you have. It’s a ton of points everywhere.

And I think it’s really clever how you get those point cards into your tableau. You play them around the tree cards. The trees each start their own separate little part of the forest and on each side you can play something out. But you are generally limited to one card per side. You are able to play out more, but only if the animal or card says you can. And each card you play next to a tree is split in two. You got a left or right or up or down. So if it’s split vertically it can only go on the top of the tree or bottom. And that covers up half the card which is clever.

1. Marvel Zombies

Finally, this is more the type of game that people think of when they think of the board games that I like. And it makes my #1 for that reasons, Marvel Zombies. Now, I don’t have the giant Galactus, but I wish that I did. It just costs so much money. But Marvel Zombies is a Zombicide game of dice chucking fun. In a normal Zombicide game you play as people fighting zombies. You can do that here, but the main draw and core box has you playing a zombies fighting heroes.

This game is a simple game in a lot of ways. It’s just going out and fighting zombies (or heroes/SHIELD agents) with some objective. And the more you take out, the more objectives that you get, the more everyone levels up. To do that you chuck a handful of dice, if you’re rolling a lot, and see if you hit. Or you move around a board and then, of course, you spawn more zombies.

Marvel Zombies is not a thinky game. There is a little bit of strategy to it, but not too much, it’s more about that fun of running into a room as the Hulk, rolling a bunch of dice, and smashing a lot of good guys. Or when a swarm of SHIELD Agents shows up with Thor either running away to try and complete an objective, or maybe taking in a whole team of zombies, everyone playing, and seeing what happens.

What Was Your Favorite from 2023?

Now, I think I could give a number of honorable mentions. But I am not going to do that because like I said, I plan to do the next five board games for 2023. I will say, I think that my big board games that I played in 2023, like the campaign game ones, all came out earlier. Often times, I find, that a big game comes out in a year, I get it and then it takes me a bit to get to it. But that’s why I do a Top 10 Campaign Game list sometimes as well as my Top 100 Games (of all time) each year.

There are a lot of great board games that came out in 2023. Which is your favorite? Is there one that you think I should try out?

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Trailblazers

Let’s talk some about the simplicity of this game, because I really appreciate that about a game. I think that there are a lot of games that do simplicity well in one of two areas, but not always in both. So let’s talk about what those two areas are and what Trailblazers does that makes both of them simple.

The first one is simplicity in game play. That is where you don’t have too many complicated choices on your turn. You can have choices, but nothing about the game takes too long. I think of games by Emerson Matsuuchi often with this, like Century: Golem Edition and Metal Gear Solid. You have choices but it’s not too many. Trailblazers is even more simple, you draft tiles and put them out, you choices are the tiles, that is it.

The other area is scoring, I’ve seen plenty of games where the game itself is pretty simple to play. But to get the scoring right and to get everything balanced, it can become a bit more of a puzzle than you want. Or everything scores a slightly different way. So I need to hold in my head how everything scores. Trailblazers is definitely on the simple end. You count the routes, paths, that you’ve created and that’s it. Now there are objective cards, but those give you points and that’s it.

Upcoming Streams

Let’s talk about what’s coming up. Wednesday, tomorrow, at 8 PM Central I’m continuing on with my Top 100 Games (of all time) 2023 Edition. You can find the link for that here. Join me for games 70 through 61 on my list and see if some of your favorites make it into that part of the list.

And then on Monday, I stream at 9 PM Central. That is normally a smaller solo board game, though, sometimes opening up some cards, Magic the Gathering in particular. But don’t expect that too often as that’s more expensive than playing the games that I do have. I have some games, like Number Drops, Floor Plan: The Winchester Mystery House, and others that I want to get played solo.

But the best way, if you want to know when I go live or a new video goes up (it’s basically always live), please consider subscribing. You can do that here. And click that notification bell on the channel and you’ll always know when I go live.

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Trailblazers

Now, let’s talk about what drew me to Trailblazers. When someone mentions a solo game it isn’t like I automatically go out and buy it. Though with my game collection you might think so. But, no, I do look into games and figure out if I’d like it.

What works for me, or I should say, interested me is the route building and card laying. I like games where you are creating paths. I also like it when you can overlay cards, to improve what you are doing. It’s a multilayer strategy, really, to get a good score in the game. Because you might do a less than ideal play with the plan to overlay it to get a great play in the game. And I utilized it a few times.

And there is a twist that I really like. I really like that you don’t start with all your main locations on the board. You build out trails one round around either rivers, hiking trails or kayaks. Then you build the next round about the one you had and a second one. Final two rounds all three of them. So you add in decision space as you go. But you also lose decision space as you go because you’ll have surrounded locations.

I also enjoy the solo play. As I said in the stream, it’s a drafting game. But to simulate the drafting you go from a hand of eight cards down to four. That makes it closer to a multiplayer game of Trailblazers which I think that sometimes the solo version of the game lacking in that. And I also like the scaling of the solo play. It isn’t beat your score, it’s beat your score and add in other challenges to make it harder or trickier.

Upcoming Streams

So tomorrow at 8 PM Central, join me for 90 through 81 of my Top 100 Games (of all time) 2023 Edition. You can find the link to that here. See what games make that section of the list. I believe that there are some new games and definitely some games that have moved around on my list from last year. So see how the new list compares. And that’ll be every Wednesday for a little while, possible week off around Thanksgiving, so into December.

And then on Monday, join me for another solo board game. There is a chance I might just play Trailblazers again because I enjoyed it that much. But more likely, now that I’m remembering, it’ll be opening up Doctor Who Magic the Gathering set. I should have a collectors box in to open up, though maybe I’ll try to find another time to open it so I can keep up with my solo gaming. I have other games like Number Drop and Iron Helm that I want to get to the table as well.

But the best way, if you want to know when I go live or a new video goes up (it’s basically always live), please consider subscribing. You can do that here. And click that notification bell on the channel and you’ll always know when I go live.

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