Theming a board game night can be a lot of fun. It gives people a good idea of what games might be played. It helps focus in a collection which games come off of the shelf. I know that I have enough board games where it is tricky sometimes to get them to the table, but if I theme the night, then I play games I might not get to otherwise. What I want to talk about is how to pick a theme, but before that, I think we should talk about how to pick games.

Picking the Games for Board Game Night

Now, you might just want to pick games that go with the theme ,and keeping things on brand for the theme is important. But it is easy to end up with a lot of the same types of games, if you pick something like fantasy, you could end up with four big games ready to go. A game night should provide some more diversity in what is played and that’s less because some people don’t like big games, but more because people will come in late. I am working on coming up with a methodology of what works well.

I think that starting out with a party or lighter/faster game is good to do. People will show up throughout that game, they can either sit down and chat with you while you play or hop into the game if it’s a party game as the points don’t matter. Then have some medium or heavier games to go after people have arrived. This can often have you splitting into a couple of groups, get a heavier game and a medium weight game going. Then as the games wrap up, you go back to lighter games again and pick ones that can end whenever or can be played multiple times pretty quickly as people will slowly drop out for the night. I’ve found that this strategy works well and the games played generally will give everyone something that they like, for those party game players or those heavier gamers.

Picking a Theme

Keep The Theme General

So, with that in mind, it makes a collection clearer for what themes might work. You’ll be able to see what games you have that fit a given theme. And when I say pick a theme, I mean give yourself a broad category. For examples, instead of 18XX go with games with trains. Instead of Lord of the Rings go with fantasy, instead of chickens go with animals. Give yourself enough to work with and a wider breath of games to pick from. It will also make the game night more inviting, because you might have three games about chickens, but if I hate chickens, I might not come, but add in animals of any sort, I would come for games about cats. That’s a silly example but helps make the point. A broader theme is more interesting because someone who doesn’t like fantasy except Lord of the Rings can still come to game night. I always try and say what games I’m looking at as well when inviting people.

Vary The Themes

And vary the theme as well. If you flip back and forth from sci-fi to fantasy and back with maybe a horror thrown in there, it’ll limit what games you can do. It’s fine to stretch a little bit to fit some of your favorite games into categories, but by theming you can also encourage other people to bring games as well.

Stretch The Themes

Now, I am a strong proponent of stretching the theme as well. You do want to play your favorite games, so make themes that they can get into, maybe just barely. It’s a food themed game night, what games have food in them even if they aren’t about food. If you love Agricola, you can make that work. Ice Cool is about flicking penguins who want fish. Or if you’re doing a theme about a school or learning, Ice Cool works for that, or about animals, Ice Cool again works. You can get games into a theme to give yourself more options to play, if you really try.

Theme To The Season

Finally, pick themes that go with the season. At the holidays, make it about party games, if you do it on a weekend evening like I do, that means around Christmas and New Years that people might have other parties as well. Make your game night something easy to drop into. Or in October go with horror games. In July, go with games about food or fireworks or about the United States of America. That’ll help you get variety in your themes as well.

Themed Game Set Examples

Food

• Sushi Go/Sushi Go party – This is a nice starting game, it plays fast and offers time to chat. It’s also enough that groups can continue playing if they want.
• Homebrewer, Foodies, and Heaven and Ale – This is the second wave of games that I’d use in my collection. They are bigger games with more going on, but Homebrewer and Foodies are pretty light weight and easy for someone who might not know the game quite as well to teach. The people who want to play a heavier game, Heaven and Ale covers that crowd.
• Point Salad and Ice Cool – Point Salad is a great wrap up the night game. It plays a decently large group, it plays fast. So a good one for the Homebrewers or Foodies players to play while Heaven and Ale players finish up their game. And Ice Cool plays a big number and is silly fun.

Horror/Halloween

• Zombie Dice – It’s a very simply push your luck dice game about zombies. Sure it’s not actually scary, but it has a horror related theme which is really what you’re going for more than something too scary.
• Dead of Winter, Betrayal at House on the Hill, Marrying Mr Darcy (with Zombie expansion) and Deranged – There are some lighter and some longer games in here, but it gives you a variety of options. And three of them handle a larger group of players.
• Deception: Murder in Hong Kong – Sure it’s not really a horror game but it’s about a murder which has a Halloween feel to it. And it’s a nice bigger group game where the games don’t last too long, people can leave between them and it can wrap down the game night.

Sci-Fi

• King of Tokyo – So this could fall into the next category of games, but the games of King of Tokyo are fast and the Cyber Bunny is definitely sci-fi. Plus since the game is simple, chatting with people who arrive while you’re playing is easy.
• Xenoshyft: Onslaught, Alien Artifacts, Clank! In! Space!, Cry Havoc – All of these are bigger games, though some of them are more complex and drier to play. They give a good variety from area control, a 4x-ish card game, two deck builders, but one cooperative and one not.
• Not Alone or Lazer Ryderz – Now, Not Alone is for if you still have a larger group. But you could do Lazer Ryderz in teams as well which is just becasically the bike game from Tron. A some good goofy fun with that game. Not Alone gives you more of a game but still plays a big play count.

Those are just three examples of what you could do. And that is how I’d build it from my collection. I also like it when people bring games that gives even more variety as to what to play.

Have you themed a game night? What’s your favorite theme?

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The Collection

Numbers

A’s – B’s – C’s – D’s – E and F’s – G and H’s – I, J and K’s – L’s – M’s – N, O, and P’s – Q and R’s – S’s – T’s – U, V, and W’s

X, Y, and Z’s

XenoShyft: Onslaught

When I look at my collection there are certain types of games that I tend to have more of. I’ve talked about roll and write games, but I also have a lot of deck building games. I like the puzzle of trying to dynamically create the best deck possible but generally I don’t just want to be doing that. XenoShyft: Onslaught adds in tower defense with a fun theme that reminds me of Starship Troopers as you are fighting off wave after wave of bugs. What makes this game stand apart is the passing of cards to other players. Normally you just build your deck, but in XenoShyft, you can give other players weapons, troops, armor, etc that you buy which will then go into their decks. It’s a clever twist and a very hard game.

Status: Played

Yahtzee

The classic roll and write game, Yahtzee. I still play this game fairly often with my parents, though I did introduce my dad to Ganz Schon Clever over the holidays. Yahtzee is a pretty simple puzzle to figure out as you just roll the dice three times and you need to maximize your score. I don’t mind that I haven’t played it as much recently, though I do still enjoy it, because I don’t think about it much when playing now. But it’s still the granddaddy of the roll and write genre and a good game to play and chat while you play.

Status: Played

Yggdrasil Chronicles

I picked up Yggdrasil Chronicles partly because it looked amazing on the table. This game has a 3D tree element that is your playing board that just looks great on the table. Plus the game has pedigree being based off of a previous game called Yggdrasil. In this game you take on the roles of gods from Norse Mythology, makes sense given the name, and you are trying to defeat and stop certain scenarios from happening. Oh, and there’s the life tree, Yggdrasil and it rotates, really excited to try this one.

Status: To Be Played

Zombicide: Green Horde

I never thought that I’d pick up a Zombicide game. They look good, but I prefer my dungeon crawler style games to be more fantasy focused and less zombie focused. But when I won the game, I won’t say no to it, so it got added to my game shelf. The minis in this game look amazing, as you’d expect from CMON. I do want to get it to the table still, as I haven’t sold the game yet, because it’s such a well known game series, I feel like I should try it. And I think it’s the type of game that I’ll enjoy, even if it doesn’t get to the table all that often.

Status: To Be Played

Zombie Dice

Zombie Dice is another one of those filler games that I’ve played a lot. I don’t mind it too much though. Zombie Dice is a simple push your luck dice game where you are trying to get as many brains as possible before you’re taken out by a shotgun. If you get hit three times, you’re done and you can’t bank the brains that you got, but if you push your luck, maybe you’ll roll more brains and be faster as the first person to 15 brains. This game is so much like Farkle, but it’s way faster and less strategy, which is fine for a game that is only about pushing your luck.

Status: Played

Zona: The Secret of Chernobyl

Final game on the list is one that I got to demo at GenCon in 2019. It was an interesting demo because while we got a very good feel for the game, it wasn’t a full demo and some of the rules were lost in translation, mainly because the rules weren’t in English yet, so the demoer was teaching it based off of the demo that they got from the Polish game designer. Zona works really well, though, for me, because it has a lot of elements that I like. You have a unique character, there is interesting combat, and there is exploration. Chernobyl happened like in our world, but in this game there is magic and mutated monsters and more which is always a good selling point. Can you get to the secret vault inside the power plant before time runs out? That is another thing, this game is competitive, but it’s very possible for the game to just win if players don’t move fast enough.

Status: Played

There’s the list, later today we’ll look back, run some numbers, and do my favorite game for each letter, like I’ve been asking you guys to do over on Twitter and Facebook. But before I do that, what are your favorite game starting with X, Y and Z? What games do I need in my collection?

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Heaven and Ale

This is a game that normally wouldn’t be the type of game that I gravitate towards. It’s a Rondel (I’ll explain) and more of a puzzle euro game all about getting your timing right, but the theme is beer. And I like beer, and I play games while drinking beer, so beer making while drinking beer seems right to me. So what’s a rondel. a rondel is basically an action path that you can go on that is circular. Depending on the game, you can go as far ahead as you want, but most of them limit how far you can go. When you go ahead, that means that you can’t go back, so say I can skip over two actions, that means, if I can move ahead three and there are ten spaces, it’d take several rounds before I could get back to one of those actions that I’ve skipped, 3 or 4. So you have to think how much it’s worth moving head and how much it makes sense to hold back. It’s a different direction than my normal theme forward games, but I like the puzzle aspect that it brings to it.

Papillon

A game about butterflies, because I only have Mariposas so I clearly need more games about butterflies, but this one is very different. In this one you are drafting rows of flower plots, and placing it so you have matching sides together. You then are trying to create large areas to score as well as set it up so that you can get butterflies, and place them on beautiful looking 3D flowers for an area control aspect of the game. This game has an amazing look on the table, and I think the complexity of the game is right for a large variety of gamers. The theme is also very friendlier than a lot, people will like butterflies more so than sci-fi or fantasy. Now obviously butterflies won’t be a theme that draws everyone in, but it won’t push them away as well.

Boomerang

Have I said recently that I like roll and writes, in fact, there’ll be a bonus roll and write at the end. But Boomerang is one that I had heard about a while ago and just don’t know a ton about. This one is a bit more a flip and write than a roll and write, but you have a bunch of different cards you use to fill in things on your board. The game looks pretty simple, pretty fast, and like it should hit the table. It is also different because compared to a roll and write, or flip and write, this game has card drafting in it. Card drafting, or drafting in general, is a great mechanic. I like that I now have several games that are flip and write, some that are unique rolling and writing and others more classic rolling and writing, plus games that have big boards, flicking, and now I’ll have a drafting and writing game as well.

Foodies

Another game that I’ve had my eye on for a long time. Foodies looks like a fun fast engine building game that is going to be on a weight similar to something like Homebrewers, where there is a bit more going on than the likes of Splendor, but easy enough to learn. In Foodies you are buying foods to build up your menu, and you place them into a grid, then you’re rolling dice and depending on what is rolled you can activate different spots and get different things, like money, or victory points, whatever it might be. What I like about this one is that it keeps you engaged even not on your turn. If someone else is rolling, you still get to activate on your menu board what was rolled. And the dice adds in some variability, but they didn’t want you to get nothing for an empty spot, so you might get a coin if it’s rolled as compared to more if you have a menu item there. The art is nice and the theme is great for this one.

Xenoshyft: Onslaught – Game Night Kit #1

Don’t ask me what’s in this, but it was $4 and more content for Xenoshyft: Onslaught, a game that I really like. I’ve almost pulled the trigger on this several times, but I was debaging if I needed a mini expansion, turns out when it’s $4 I do. It basically adds in a few new equipment cards and things like that to add even more variety to the game and a way to set-up some special things. I think it’ll be a fun edition to a game that I really need to get to the table again.

Finally, the bonus one.

This one came because I had some games to sell, in fact, we’re going to have a new post also coming today called Point of Sale which is what I am selling back to my FLGS because I don’t need it on my shelf anymore, and why.

Twice as Clever!

I’ve recently been on a kick playing the Ganz Schon Clever app a lot, and I’ve actually gotten in five games of Ganz Schon Clever as well. But Twice as Clever! is the follow up to Ganz Schon Clever and there’s actually a third out now as well. While Ganz Schon Clever is fun and simple, Twice as Clever adds in a whole lot more challenge to the game while keeping the mechanics very similar. The new additions are a lot of fun and create a really good time playing in the app. I need to get this one to the table soon as well.

Which is your favorite of these games that I ordered?

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100 to 91

90 to 81

80 to 71

70 to 61

60 to 51

50 to 41

40 to 31

30 to 21

Plus a few notes on how I’ve put together the list:

• These are my favorite, you want what people consider best, see the Board Game Geek Top 100
• If a game you love isn’t on the list, it might be be coming, I might not have played it, and if I have, it’s 101
• If a game looks cool, I have links to buy it from CoolStuffInc or Amazon, or you can grab most at your FLGS
• There are a few games, Destiny 2 Player versus regular Destiny where if they are basically the same thing, I only do one of them

20. Letter Jam

Most word games aren’t cooperative and they tend to be the person who has the biggest vocabulary or maybe in some games it’s pattern recognition. This one has some of that in it, but it isn’t based off of who knows more words since everyone is trying to use deduction to figure out what their letters are and then unscramble them to figure out what word they have. This game is really clever in that you can see one letter from everyone else but you can’t see yours. So you are having to deduce what letters you have based off of the words that people are creating and the letters you can see. For example, if I have a “Z” and I can see that other players have an I, Px2, E, and R, I can now slightly to narrow down what letter I have. Granted, that’s not a great clue because I don’t know mine so it could be a “TIPPER”, “DIPPER” or something of the like. Plus, not only am I trying to figure out my letters so I can unscramble them to figure out my word, I have to be helping everyone else doing that as well. The game just works really well and it’s very puzzly. I also like the game because it can handle a larger group of players without it feeling bogged down because hopefully, everyone is in on the clue word being given to help deduce their letters. Finally, I really like how this game forces you to think about the clue you’re going to give and give a good clue. You want to make it so that at least someone can basically lock in a letter or at least really help them narrow it down so they can make an educated guess.

Last Year: 27

19. Hanamikoji

The highest pure two player game on the list, Hanamikoji is a really fun and fast abstract game. In this game you are trying to win the favor of Geisha so that they will visit your restaurant. Do to this, you are giving them gifts and winning their favor. But how you give gifts is what makes this game really shine. Each player has four actions they can do a round, and they have to do each of the actions once. So they can discard two cards, face down, and they won’t be used for winning favor. They can put a card face down that will be used for winning favor. They can put out three cards face up and their opponent picks one and those are immediately used for winning favor. Or you can put out two sets of two cards, face up, and your opponent picks one and you get the other set for immediately winning favor. The game has a great push and pull feel to it as you fight for favor, and you use your cards to hide some information from your opponent as well as let them make the tough decisions for you when you split and they choose or they pick one of the three. It’s a very thinky game and really is wonderful as a two player filler game.

Last Year: 13

18. Sagrada

Some games just look amazing on the table, and Sagrada is really one of those games. The translucent dice really give you the feel of the stained glass window that you are creating. And the game itself is a great dice drafting game. In this game you are making a stained glass window, and depending on the difficulty of your window, you need some certain numbers and colors in certain locations. And you can’t have the the dice orthogonal to the one you placed match the number or color, that is up and down and left and right. So you have to plan things out, you can’t place in the orthogonal spots a three if you are locked into having a certain number, a three, in a location on the board. There’s some strategy to the game, some luck, and the luck is actually mitigated quite nicely by the fact that you every game you have some tools out, there tools can allow you to draft two dice at once, or maybe move a die after it’s been placed, draw out a new die and use that one, there are a lot of different things all which help you mitigate the luck. Plus, the scoring is variable as well. You don’t get points for completely filling in your window, but you do lose points for empty spots, and you have a secret scoring objective as well as three public ones, which might be no repeated colors in a column gets you 6 points, or something like that, and you can score each column. The game is very variable and works really well.

Last Year: 20

17. Arkham Horror: The Card Game

Dropping all of 11 spots, this is mainly because I haven’t gotten this game to the table in a little bit, I really do need to as every time I play the game I really enjoy it. In this game you are playing through linked scenarios that tell a larger story, campaign style. You have a deck for an investigator, that you’ve constructed based off of deck construction rules, that you are using to fight monster, get clues, and figure out what it happening in the story. What works so well in this game is that the scenarios can vary wildly. Even n the base box, in the first scenario you are going to be fighting some and looking for clues, second scenario, you don’t want to fight much and you are trying to find as many cultists are possible. And depending on what you do, you might get access to certain cards, scenarios might be harder or easier, the game is just really well designed that way. And you can also change your difficulty level really easily as there is a modifier bag, and you can scale how difficult or easy you want it based off of what is in there. And the story can branch based off of what you’ve done, now it might not branch massively, but you can make a difference in how easy or hard or where the story goes based off of what you do in previous scenarios. This is one that I really need to play more of.

Last Year: 6

16. Deception: Murder in Hong Kong

Now, I talk very often about how I don’t like social deduction games, this is one that I really like. There’s one huge reason that I really like the game and that’s because you can immediately start accusing people and trying to figure out what is happening in the case. In most social deduction games you’re basically taking a stab in the dark the first round or so as you guess who might be a traitor and who might not be a traitor. But in this one, the second the forensic scientist puts out the first report, you have something you can actually work with. In this game one person is a murder who picks from the four clues and murder weapons in front of them, one of each that they, the forensic scientist, and if there’s an accomplice know. The person playing the forensic scientist ends up then passing up reports, such as murder location, and with that, you can immediately start to talk and come up with what of all the clues and murder weapons would make sense there. So you are immediately doing something as players and immediately doing something meaningful. This game also lends itself to way more story that just comes naturally from the mechanics of the game which also make it more enjoyable. Dropped a little bit, but that’s more because other things have moved up, this is an amazing game for big groups.

Last Year: 10

15. Clank! In! Space!: A Deck-Building Adventure

Another one from the Top 10 that has dropped and this again has to do with it not being played all that often recently., I have an expansion for this game that I haven’t even used yet, so I want to get it to the table, but it’s been a hard year to play a ton of games, and deck builders are not games that work well via Zoom. in this game you are going into the most secure location on Lord Eradikus’ ship stealing his treasure. Along the way you’ll make noise, things will go clank, and he’ll realize someone is on his ship. Can you get in and out before he gets you and with the best and most valuable treasure so you will win? This game is an improvement, in my opinion out of the base box on the fantasy themed Clank!. The game definitely doesn’t take itself seriously, and it has fixed an issue I have with Clank! where you can rush in grab a treasure and leave and rush the end of the game, here you can do that kind of but not nearly as effectively, so it’s worth it to push for a better treasure, if you can. The theme is fun and they keep it super light, and I love deck-building, so an easy game to put high on my list.

Last Year: 9

14. Welcome To…

Highest roll and write or flip and write on the list. Welcome To… is just a fun game for me, I like the strategy that goes into it as you race for various scoring cards and you still building and upgrading your scoring the best you can. This game is all about building your perfect 1960’s neighborhood with white picket fences, 2.5 children and dogs, well, those last two aren’t in the game, but you are filling in streets, putting in house numbers, building parks and swimming pools. What makes this game really work for me is that you’re using one of three combinations of a house number and an ability on your turn. And you can see the upcoming abilities for the next turn, but you won’t know the house number. You’re trying to balance filling in streets, getting more scoring by having more parks or pools, but also getting the points from the objectives as well. There game isn’t complex, but it’s a good time and great for large groups.

Last Year: 12

13. XenoShyft: Onslaught

Another deck building game and another one that has dropped out of my top 10, does that mean I like them less? Nope, there’s just so many good games. I really like XenoShyft: Onslaught because it is a cooperative deck building game where you are fighting off wave after wave of bug monsters with your force of troops on an alien planet. What I like about this game is that you have your hand of cards, but you always get a free money card to add to your hand every turn, so you are never short on money. But to go with that, you also are able to help other people as they prepare their defenses, so if I have the armory as my location that I’m defending, it means I can get weapons at a discount, so maybe I have too many weapons and not enough troops to deal with a wave, so I might give someone else a weapon from my hand, and maybe that person has the barracks and has more troops and they will put a troop into my row. I like how each role a person can take feels different and can help the group in different ways. And I like that you can bolster someone else’s deck as well. Now, this is a tough game to win, but one that is a lot of fun and for fans of deck building is working quite well.

Last Year: 7

12. T.I.M.E. Stories

Another dropper from the Top 10, and this one I have actually played several times since last year’s list, I think this is dropping more because of other games moving up than anything I have an issue with. This is still an amazing puzzle game where you are trying to go through the story and figure out everything that is happening and how to stop the time incursion that is threatening to change up the world. They do a great job with just basically using cards of making the game feel really different depending on the scenario that you play. And while the story isn’t always the strongest on a given scenario there is basically always something unique and different to try. I also like how you do multiple runs, sure that means you are repeating stuff sometimes, but it allows you to really explore the world and it feels thematic to how the world and the technology works. I know a lot of people way that this drops off in some of the scenarios, but through five now, I’ve enjoyed them all, and while there could be a better and bigger story unfolding through all of them, I like all the scenario stories.

Last Year: 5

11. Lords of Hellas

New game alert, now this is actually a game that’s been out a couple of years, but I just got it last year and got it to the table in February of this year. Lords of Hellas is a big minis game, but actually plays really smoothly with some euro style mechanics being blended in with amerithrash. In this game each player has a hero who leads their troops and moves around the board building temples, fighting monsters, building statues, and conquering lands. In this game you have a number of different ways to win, you could fight and defeat three monsters, you could hold five temples, you could conquer two regions and all their territories, you could control a completed statue, the game gives you a lot of ways to win, and even with that, in a five player game, we had three of the five a turn away from winning when the game ended, and the other two players were two turns away from winning. The game has a lot of fun mechanics, and your hero has their own unique ability and as temples are built, your faction gets more and more unique abilities that helps you focus how you are going to play the game and how you might win. This is game that I want to play more, it’s just a bit of a beast to get to the table and it doesn’t really play over something like Zoom, so it might have to sit on my shelf for a while, because I feel like there is a lot of variability and a lot of cool things to be done in the game.

Last Year: Not Ranked

So, we have a bunch of movement here. 5 from the 2019 Top 10 are now in this section of the list, and we have at #11 a game that I hadn’t even played last year that has rocketed up the boards. This of course means with the Top 10, we have 5 new games to that section of the list, are they new games, or are they games that are just on the rise as I’ve played them more, we’ll have to wait to see. But your guesses for my Top 10 games in the comments below, and let me know your favorites on this part of the Top 100.

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The idea of variable player power is that each player can do something different in the game. Now, that might mean that you’re the only player who can do something, or you can do something better than anyone else. And this isn’t because of the skill that the player possesses themselves, it is instead something that the game grants the player the ability to do.

A kind of silly but obvious example of this is in the game Magic Maze. In that game you are trying to, without verbal communication, move a group of heroes through a mall so that they can pick up what they need and then get out before time runs out. In this game each player has a certain power, you might be able to move the heroes down while I can move them up, someone else can move them left, right, and so on and so forth. While all the powers do basically the same thing, move the heroes, each of them moves it in a unique way. And now I wouldn’t really consider this a great example of how variable player powers can be used in a game, it is obvious, because you are doing something different than anyone else, in fact, you are only doing things different than everyone else.

In most variable player power games, your power isn’t the only thing that you can do. Most of the time there will be a set of common actions that you can take, but you’ll have some added thing that you can do in the game. Pandemic is a good example of this. In Pandemic everyone has the same abilities, you can travel, treat a disease, trade a card, or cure a disease. However, if you are the Dispatcher, you can move other character pawns, not just your own. If you are the Medic, you can treat a disease better. And the same goes for the likes of the Researcher and Scientist and all the other characters. They can all do the basic actions the game, but they can improve upon a basic action or add in a whole action or affect that is specific to them.

Why I like this mechanic so much is that it makes each role in the game feel different. And it means that each time you play the game it feels different as well. In the Pandemic example, if I play the Dispatcher, I’m doing actions that are helping us win the game but that are consistently different than those of the Medic. I care about getting people to where they need to be versus healing a disease. So next time when I’m the researcher and my actions are all about getting people the cards they need, I can coordinate and plan with the Dispatcher to get me to where I need to go so that I’m not using the cards I need to help someone else cure a disease. Sure, you can repeat or find a favorite character for playing or team that you like for winning, but some of the fun is trying out new things. And that’s even more interesting, in my opinion, in a competitive game, because generally that means you are changing how you target a win, I’ll talk about on of my favorites with that coming up here.

Gateway Game:

Homebrewers – Now, I’m sure people have a bunch of different games that I could have put here, but this newer game is one that I really like that plays fast. In this game you are brewing and improving your homebrewed beer. You do this by adding ingredients to your beer, this improves your beer so it makes it more likely you’ll play in the Summer Beer Fest and Oktober Fest. Where the player powers come in is that each character can do something unique. One of the homebrewers is better at cleaning their equipment, another is efficient so they get an extra action die in a month. All of things that are done are simple, and at the end, you end up with a lot of crazy sounding beer that might be good or might just be weird. If that theme doesnt work for you, Pandemic is also a great opion.

Medium Weight:

Xenoshyft: Onslaught – Again an area that could have a lot of different games, but I really like this one because it combines two or my favorite mechanics, player powers with deck building. You even get to blow up some bugs in this cooperative game. In Xenoshyft: Onslaught, you are fighting back wave after wave of bugs who are trying to get into your mining base on an alien planet. To do this, you create a line of defense, but what’s fun is that you can help other people with their defenses as well, so it’s very cooperative in nature. The player powers come in with what group of the security defending the base you are. If you are a medic, that means you start with a special card to start in your deck and it means that you get a few special abilities that unlock over the various waves of bugs. It can be a discount when it comes to buying weapons, armor, more troops, medical supplies, and then they start to build from there. It’s a very tough cooperative game, but I like it a lot.

Heavy Weight

Lords of Hellas – Now, this one is my most controversial pick because there are a lot of good ones out there, and some people don’t like Lords of Hellas all that well. I really like it, though, because of the variable player powers and multiple win conditions. In this game you are either trying to control two groups of land areas, a completed statue, defeated three monsters, or control areas with five temples. At the beginning of the game you pick a hero, and that hero has a unique power. This can help you decide what you want to go after in terms of winning the game. It can be as simple as just starting the game with a priestess but that means you can start going down the path of getting temples faster. But it leads you a bit in a way to win, though, when I got the extra priestess and was going for temples, I actually got closer to winning with two areas controlled. But I like the different options that it gave you and there were a ton of different heroes, so you could really tailor it to how you wanted.

Those are just some of them that I like, there are so many out there, even something like Gloomhaven falls into that category but I skipped dungeon crawler games because while it is a variable power, it feels and plays different, and I’ll talk about dungeon crawler and what that means coming up anyways. What are some of your favorite games with variable player powers? Does it sound interesting to you if you haven’t played a game like that?

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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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So what are my top 10 cooperative games?

10 – The Lost Expedition
Number ten on the list is the smallest game of the group but also one of the easier ones to teach and get to the table. In this, you are your fellow players are trying to lead your team of adventurers on hikes twice a day so that they can get to the Lost City of Z, but the jungles are dangerous, and you never know what might be coming up next. But that’s for you to decide as players, without discussing, you put down cards for a morning and evening hike that might get you more food or cause you to find bullets or maybe you get hook worms, and no one wants that, but there are difficult decisions to make on each card, and you can discuss that part. One of the games that really has something built into to stop alpha gamers from being able to run the game. It’s a lot of fun, and it plays fast as well, which some of the games further on the list won’t.

9 – Arkham Horror: The Card Game
The first, but not the last Lovecraft Mythos game on the list from Fantasy Flight, this one is the smaller or the two, though it packs a lot of punch. In this one, like all of Fantasy Flight’s Lovecraftian Games, you are an investigator working together with the other investigators trying to stop whatever horror is being called through by cultists. But in this you can be fighting, but much of it is investigating, and the game is just basically cards and a bunch of tokens. You don’t need a bit board to tell a big story or change up the game. The different things that the cards can do and how they can use them to create a town or house or other locations and it feels different is impressive. Now, with the base box, it’s only a 1-2 player game, but with another core box you can play up to 4, so if you have a larger group it’s something to consider. And Fantasy Flight does a great job of supporting this, as they do with all their living card games, so there is always more story coming out.

8 – Aeon’s End: War Eternal
When it comes to deckbuilding a lot of them do similar things, you add cards, you maybe buy more cards or attack, and then you draw a new hand until you can’t fill the hand and then you shuffle up your discard and repeat the process. Aeon’s End: War Eternal is unique because you never shuffle, when you discard cards, you choose the order they go so that you can create, if you’re good at card counting, a hand or combo that you want to get because it’s going to be strong. It’s a lot of fun to see how that piece of the puzzle fits together. Plus, you’re all trying to take down a nemesis who is bent on taking out the town of Gravehold. And each nemesis plays differently. I have really enjoyed both plays of this game, and it’s a good challenge, there are a lot of mages, who play differently, and there are expansions galore for the game with even more nemesis and breach mages to choose from.

7- T.I.M.E. Stories
One of the most unique games on the list, T.I.M.E. Stories has an element of an escape room game, it has some role playing aspects, and there’s a good amount of narrative to it. You are all part of a time agency who is trying to stop unwanted time incursions from happening and messing up the timeline. This means you might be going to the earth in the 90’s, or another dimension where there is magic and dragons. And it can change that wildly in each of the expansions and each time you play. Now, each scenario can only be played once, but to get through and beat the story it is at least a couple hours of excitement for 4 players, if not up to 3, and it’s cheaper than a movie at that point. Plus, the upside, and sometimes downside, is that because it’s such a sandbox, you can do anything in the games, and the creators have done a good job of doing that, creating interesting puzzles and mechanics to test out along the way.

6 – XenoShyft: Onslaught
You and your fellow crack team of marines, scientists, and medics have been tasked with protecting a mining facility from hordes and hordes of giant monstrous bugs. Why did they build a mining facility on this remote planet, money of course, but now you’re about to overrun with bugs, can you fend off the waves they’re throwing at you? This is a very tough game, even though it makes it’s deck building easier than a lot of others. You can help other people, you can give them troops or weapons that you’ve bought for your deck to help them shore up their defenses, they can give you stuff in return, or use stim packs and grenades to help you when it’s your turn to face a wave of monsters. This game is clever in what it does, and it creates a good amount of tension, plus I like that the game is basically all simultaneous so there isn’t downtime for anyone.

5 – Pandemic Legacy Season 1
Seems a bit on the nose to be playing right now (article written 4/13/2020 during Covid-19 Pandemic), but it is a really good cooperative game. I could have put down either season of Pandemic or base Pandemic on the list, and any are great options. Can you prevent the spread and find the cures to four diseases before they run across the world and destroy everything? This game is pretty simple compared to the other ones, but still offers a lot of good choices and you always feel like there are 1-2 more things that you need to do on your turn and you hope that you’ve picked the right things so that you don’t have an outbreak on your hands. Also, do you have a good combination of characters that are able to fight it off and can you use it to the best of your ability. A lot of questions, but it’s a good game, a simpler game, and one that you can play faster and with more people than some because it an easier game to pick up.

4 – Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon
When Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table came to the lands of Avalon, they were wild and untamed and the Wyrdness and Foredwellers twisted the land, but they forced it to their will, creating Menhir, but now that was long ago, and the Menhir are starting to go out and the Wyrdness is coming back over the lands. You and your fellow adventurers are only going out because those who were supposed to have saved you and your village have gone out and not come back. Can you survive the twisted lands of Avalon? This game works really well as it’s a very tough game where survival is the goal but not a guarantee, and you spend so much time exploring and discovering new things about Avalon and you might not have wanted to know. Then you go from the exploration piece of the game and jump into combat which can be tough as monsters aren’t always meant to be beaten and diplomatic encounters can turn violent if you’re not careful. There are chunks of the game that are pretty well split up where you can do daily actions separately or explore while someone else fights, but this is a grand free flowing game that tells an interesting story.

3 – Mansions of Madness 2nd Edition
You, and your fellow paranormal investigators have been called to a mansion to explore some unnatural goings on. This might be a crazed cultist leading a band of cultists and trying to summon a deep old one. It could be you’ve made it to late and a town has been overrun with Deep Ones and you need to figure out how to escape. You and your fellow investigators could get split up in two different timelines and need to work together to solve the mystery and get the one who time traveled back. There are a lot of different scenarios, and an app that helps you keep track of everything. The game is set in the Lovecraft Mythos, but it has more of an investigative feel to it, than leaning into as much horror. If you want a game that is fairly big but doesn’t feel as daunting as some dungeon crawlers, Mansions of Madness is a good option.

2 – Marvel Champions: The Card Game
This game has made it on a lost of lists and it’s working it’s way up to being one of my favorite games of all time. The game just feels like you’re in a comic fighting a villain. And you get the full comic feeling as you can team up superheroes as well as flip back and forth between an alter-ego and superhero side in order to rest and recover if the villain knocks you around to me. The game does a lot of clever things, and you can create the team-ups that you always wanted, or at least some of them, eventually Fantasy Flight will come out with more heroes so you can create any team-up you want. And they’ve managed to make the villains feel different as well as the heroes, so you can get a lot of unique games.

1 – Gloomhaven
No surprise here, though there are some slight semi-cooperative elements of the game, mainly having specific goals that you need to do in a given scenario depending off of some card draw, but for the most part it’s working together, and those goals are just perks and don’t make or break the game if you don’t get them. Gloomhaven is an epic dungeon crawling and character leveling game where you and a group of fellow mercenary adventurers go through and try and figure out what strange things are happening in Gloomhaven and the surrounding areas. The story is fun but it really shines with a puzzly sort of card based combat that makes everything work together. And it feels like there’s always more to explore in the game.

I think that one thing I really like about cooperative games is that you get so many great shared stories out of them. Even the ones that aren’t just storytelling heavy can still have great moments in them as you roll the right number to get what you needed or draw the right card. It’s such a shared victory and moment that they often stick out to me. And I know that I have so many more cooperative games sitting on my shelf that I like and that are waiting to be played again or for the first time. What are some of your favorite cooperative games or cooperative gaming experiences?

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10 – Onirim
Technically you can play the game with two players, but it’s a solo game through and through. It’s a fun puzzle type of game as you are trying to escape or sort a dream before the nightmares can get you. But to do that, you need to play down colored cards in pairs of three of the same color, you just can’t have the same symbol back to back. And beware the pesky nightmares, that can ruin a good hand or will you push your luck in other ways to deal with the nightmare? The game plays fast, and app for it is great, but I like playing it with the physical game, even though there can be a lot of shuffling. There are also a lot of expansions/variations that you can play out of the box as well, so it gives you good variety in the game.

9 – Dresden Files Cooperative Card Game
The name is a mouthful, but the game offers a lot of interesting fun solo. In it you play as Harry Dresden and two other characters when solo and you build out a hand for each of them. So really it’s a multihanded game at that point, but compared to the normal three player game, I believe that you end up with less cards to work with, and in a game where cards are at a premium, it makes is very tough still even with perfect information. The game is definitely a puzzle to be solved at that point in time, and with a few lucky die rolls maybe it’ll be an easy solve, but you never know. If you’re a Dresden Files fan, I’d say that it matches the books well, if you’re not, I think the game is interesting, but probably not as strong.

8 – Welcome To…
This flip and write offers you an interesting game that you can do solo as you build up your perfect Stepford, I mean perfect town. It does one thing that isn’t my favorite in a solo game, it’s a beat your best score sort of game, but it works well as a solo game. You have a lot of choices to make as you have to use two cards from a combination of three. Now, this is the solo mode that comes out of the base box, I do believe that they created another solo variant for the game at a later time that might be even better or give you another challenge for winning besides just trying to beat your best score. It’s a good solo filler game.

7 – Arkham Horror: The Card Game
This is the game that a future game on the list is loosely based off of, but this one holds up well on it’s own. In this game you construct a deck for your investigator and then you send them off to investigate some weird goings on and solve the mystery that is happening. I like it solo because as compared to some where you are just trying to beat a point total, in this one, you have a clear objective and with only one player, the game moves along really nicely. I have played this one player and two player, and while two player is fun because you can share the story, at one player you have no downtime. And there’s a ton of content for this, so you’re not likely to ever run out of material to play in the game.

6 – Aeon’s End: War Eternal
One of a few deck builders or deck constructions games, Aeon’s End: War Eternal is a really fun game and works really well solo. On Malts and Meeples, I played through a game of it solo and it worked well to play it two handed. You can play up to 4 breach mages, but I think that two works fine and is easy to keep track of. But because you aren’t shuffling the decks that are being built ever, it keeps the downtime of not playing the game to a minimum because you’re always just flipping for the next turn. The game has a lot of cool mechanics, and I think that the not shuffling the deck is one of the coolest, and I really like the turn order mechanic as well where you’re just flipping from a deck so you never know who is going to go next.

5 – Xenoshyft: Onslaught
I’ve played this one solo, kind of, I’ve played it solo in the app, and while the game worked well solo, the app is horrible and I’d strongly recommend not playing it that way. It definitely doesn’t work on a phone and maybe would on a tablet. But it’s a game that you can find and have a variety of how you play it depending on which character you pick. I expect that it’d be more challenging solo, though, you only have to make it through 3 rounds at each difficulty level. The downside is that the health of your base is way lower. The game offers good challenge and I like the somewhat silly nature of the game because it reminds me of Starship Troopers and a bit of Ender’s Game as you’re defending a base against bug monsters.

4 – Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon
The downside to putting this one on the list is that it’s going to be extremely hard to find. It was a Kickstarter at the end of 2018 that delivered at the end of 2019. There are going to be some copies on eBay, but I’d expect them to be expensive, but I really like this game solo. It’s a massive story driven survival game where you are sent out from your little farming village after the real heroes of the town have gone out and not come back. Can you fend off the Wyrdness that is creeping across the lands of Avalon and solve the mysteries that the game presents to you. The game is done in chapters, and I find the chapters to be a solid bite of the game that you can play in a sitting or two and get interesting and good story. It’s going to be spendy, but it’s really good.

3 – Mansions of Madness: Second Edition
When you want a mystery to try and solve, Mansions of Madness: Second Edition gives you that. I have played this solo once I believe, and I thought it worked pretty well. Board Game Geek users don’t think it’s bad at one, they just like it at higher player counts, and I think the most heavily story driven games I find that to be true, but it works well in a pinch. As you’re playing against the app which is laying out the mystery, you might find that you’re not having enough time to do everything, and that’s even the case with multiplayer. The app lays out the board and mysteries as well, so even if you’ve played a scenario once and lost, you can play it again and you’ll notice little things that are different about it. I really like this game, and because of the app integration, it’d be a really good solo game.

2 – Marvel Champions: The Card Game
I’ve played this one solo a few times and while I’ve only beat it multiplayer, that is because I was learning it more so playing it solo. The game is a lot of fun, you feel like the superhero that you’re supposed to be playing with the actions that they have and equipment. The deck building aspect is interesting as well because you can really change up the character with the aspect that you give them, maybe you want Iron Man to be defensive or a leader or aggressive, by swapping out some of the generic cards, you’re able to build the character so that they focus in a unique way. If you’re a Marvel fan and a board game fan, I’d say that this game is a really good choice, and the solo mode for this time works extremely well.

1 – Gloomhaven
This is one of them that I haven’t played solo, but you can, even though you need to play it two handed solo. I can see the solo working really well and I know it’s very popular solo, because you can really work on synergies and strategies that you might not be able to do in a multiplayer game. They recommend in the rule book for solo that you play up a level of difficulty for that reason because you’ll know precisely how fast both the characters are going. Now, with Gloomhaven , playing is solo, I’d say that the Gloomhaven Helper app is a must, and I’d even think the Foreteller app with the 51 base Gloomhaven scenarios and coming soon the side scenarios being read to you, it’d offer more feeling of discovery and immersion. Now, Gloomhaven is, of course, massive, so I’d recommend getting an organizer and even leaving it set out if you can.

What are some games that you like to play solo? I know that I have more on my list, such as Aeon’s End Legacy, Folklore The Affliction and 7th Continent that I need to play. Plus there are games like Sword & Sorcery and Legends of Andor that’d work well solo but didn’t make the list for me. Now is really the time if you can dig into a bigger adventure game to tackle one of those solo as we probably won’t be able to have many in person gaming experiences for a while.

Are there any games that I should checkout for solo play? Do you think that any listed don’t work well solo?

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10 – Lords of Hellas
You’re playing as a mythological Greek character, of course they are going to have their own powers. They have a couple of things that are unique, first they have something that they get while setting, up, in my case, I was getting a priest/priestess to start the game. And then you have a special ability that only you can do. It kind of helps focus you on what you want to do for a win condition because those are so diversified as well. The game has a lot of unique things that you can do as well, because when temples are built, it might trigger drafting a blessing. And those blessings are unique powers to you a well so you become more unique and diversified as time goes on the further you get into the game.

9 – Dice Throne Season 1 and 2
These characters are completely unique in the game. They roll their own unique dice, they have their own unique decks, and their player board is going to do unique things as well. The game is pretty simple in concept as it uses Yahtzee and King of Tokyo style rolling where you can roll three times and you see what you get, but when you actually dig into what the characters can do, there’s a lot of interesting things that allow you tweak dice or that you can focus on. The Pyromancer plays very different than the Shadow Thief who plays different than the Gunslinger who is different than the Cursed Pirate, so you do need to plan out your strategies and hope that you have the cards to make the dice rolls work. It’s probably the simplest game on the list, but it gives you that feeling of playing a special character without you learning so much that’s new.

8 – Aeon’s End: War Eternal
There are a number of things that make you unique in this deck building game. First, your deck is going to be constructed differently at the start, you are going to have a card in there that is special to you. So that’s a unique power. The set-up of your breaches for casting spells is also unique, but not really a power. Finally, on your player board, you have an ability that you can charge, that ability is probably pretty powerful and it’s unique to you. All of that gives you a unique feel and a unique focus. If you plan it right, you can set-up good synergies between the characters where one character can get a spell cheaper and pass that spell to another player, and that other player can then focus on getting breaches open to cast more spells for better use of the games money.

7 – Mansions of Madness 2nd Edition
Spoilers, this isn’t the only Arkham game on the list. Fantasy Flight does a good job of making all the characters with unique powers. Not only do you have a unique skill set and health and sanity levels. But it’s the character powers and unique character items that really can set you apart. And generally, you’re going to need to use those powers because it’s going to give you something that you can do that is just better than a regular action. Now, they don’t always come into play, but to really optimize your game, you’re probably going to want to use those powers. There’s just a lot to love about this game and the variable player powers is just the icing on the cake.

6 – XenoShyft: Onslaught
Not one that jumped out to me at the start as having variable player powers, but when I thought about it, you do have unique roles that you do. At the start it’s just that every role can buy a certain type of item cheaper. But as you get further into waves, you unlock more special abilities that make your character unique. Plus, in your starting deck, as this is a deck builder, you get unique things. It might be weapon or armor or a soldier, but you are going to have a unique starting deck compared to everyone else. That really drives the game because you need to support each other, and it has the interesting mechanic where you can trade cards or play cards when another person is going in order to help them get through their line up of alien bugs. So while some of the variable power games on the list have you really as your own unique character where you do that thing, this one is set-up so that you can help the other players which is a unique twist.

5 – Arkham Horror: The Card Game
First of two living card games, but all of Fantasy Flight’s Arkham line of products (seeing as this isn’t the first on the list) do a good job with variable player powers. You always are going to have different stats for things like lore, agility, and strength, but you also are going to have a special character power that only you can do, and beyond that, your health and sanity ratios are going to be different as well. Beyond that, each character is going to have a deck that is uniquely built for them. While some of these aren’t technically powers, they are things that make your character feel very unique. And it can help tailor your play style, you’re probably always going to need to be okay at getting clues, but some characters are going to be better at that while others are going to be stronger at attacking. Overall, it’s just a good system and makes any Arkham line of game feel unique.

4 – Marvel Champions
Marvel Champions hits what I want for variable player powers, giving it to me not just because my deck of cards is unique, but because I can do something special as both my super hero side and my alter-ego side. In this game you’re facing off against a villain as a Marvel superhero such as Spider-Man or Captain America. Captain America can do something different as Steve Rogers and as Captain America and those things are different than what Peter Parker can do or Spider-Man. And each character that they release is different. So in a multiplayer game of Marvel Champions, you feel like your hero is that hero and that you can do different things. Then you add in aspects, which are part of the deck building piece, so you might have protection where you are better at defense or aggression that make you even more unique.

3 – T.I.M.E. Stories
This one is a bit trick to talk about because everything is kind of part of the stories in the game. But I’ll give you the premise for the game, you are part of a time agency who is meant to stop time incursions from coming through and messing up the timeline. But it isn’t like you are fully transported back in time, just your conscious is transported. That’s where you get your variable powers from. And the powers your “vessel” as they call them in the game, has, depends on your scenario. Again, I don’t want to go into it too much as it’s fun to determine what a scenario is as you open up the thing, but some of them are fairly obvious at least to the setting with names like Under the Mask and the Egyptian images on the box or The Asylum is probably about an Asylum. I’ve really enjoyed the puzzle nature of the game, and while I think that the player powers sometimes are just okay or won’t be used at all, it is part of the game and you can find some decent combos.

2 – Pandemic Legacy Season 1
This is true for all Pandemic games, so if you don’t want to get the Legacy version of the game, just get basic Pandemic. In the game you take on different roles of people trying to stop a Pandemic. The Medic is able to remove disease cubes easier, the Dispatcher can move players around the board faster, the Scientist can discover a cure with fewer cards. And you can upgrade and improve the characters as you go so that they get more diverse and more variable in what they can do. I won’t go into what those upgrade are as it would be a little bit of a spoiler for some of the stuff that you unlock in the game, but it’s a great experience and the fact that you can customize and streamline your team in hopes of being able to better win games, it’s a ton of fun.

1 – Gloomhaven
It’s my favorite game, of course it has variable player powers. In the game, you play as a character and you have your own unique hand of actions that you can do. Some characters are going to be manipulating elements to perform stronger attacks. Others are going to be supporting with healing or they might be the tank or maybe they’re a ranged attacker. But each character is really different and it makes you feel like you are unique. It can be mechanical in what the character can do, but it really does feel like you can do something else compared to your fellow players. And every time you unlock a new character by retiring your old one, it’s something different. Yes, this game is massive, but if you want something that just has so much diversity in the characters, you can’t go wrong with Gloomhaven.

So, I have so many more that I could put on as well. Literally, all of those games are probably in my top 15-20 of all time (20 as of 2019, minus Lords of Hellas that I hadn’t played yet). I also considered another game in my top 15, Star Wars: Rebellion. Board Game Geek has it listed as variable player power and they definitely are. However, it is so asymmetrical that I feel like I need to put it in it’s own separate category, because everything is so different. Sure, you’re still producing things in a similar way, but it’s more asymmetrical for me. And there are others like Sword & Sorcery and Dead of Winter just missed my list, like I said, I love games with variable player powers.

What are some of your favorite games with variable player powers? What are some that I should checkout?

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This first list is going to be Deck Building Games, now on BGG, they combine pool and bag building games as well, but I’m only going to do deck building. However, it is going to include deck construction games as well. Because you are technically constructing the deck, it is just prior to the game, but it is also a large part of the game. I will call out those games. In deck building, you are constructing the deck to do something in the game, it might be getting victory points, it might be for buying more cards, fighting or many other things. Let’s see what my list looks like.

The List

10 – The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle Earth
It’s a long title and an interesting game, a deck construction game, you start out with an archetype and some character cards. But you can play against type, so maybe Gimli as a leader and Aragorn as a tank, and between scenarios you can spend experience to level up the deck and get better cards. How you use the cards is interesting, most of the time you are looking for successes on cards, but you can also use cards for a more permanent ability, but the better the ability, more likely it’s to have successes on it, which means you want it in the deck for your challenges so that you can pass them. It’s a good mechanic because it makes so many decisions tough. Plus, there’s a campaign for it, and an app driven story, this is weaker than Mansions of Madness 2nd Edition for that, but the app helps so much, if you’re a Lord of the Rings fan, it’s definitely a game to check out.

9 – Dragonfire
I haven’t played this game as much as I’d like though I have played both Dragonfire and Shadowrun: Crossfire, which are both built off of the same system. I’m going with Dragonfire because that’s the one that I own. The game offers interesting scenarios and challenges for the players to defeat, and you start out with your class which means that you are a little bit better at something than others. You get to purchase cards to improve your deck, but at the same time, you’re trying to deal with monsters and avoid becoming exhausted or taken out. It’s a tough game that I don’t feel like I fully have a grasp on the strategy for it yet, but I like the deck building aspect and I think that it does some interesting things with leveling up your characters. Definitely a fun time to play, and while I like the Shadowrun RPG theme better than the D&D RPG theme, I think that both are fun, so either works, just depends if you want fantasy or cyberpunk.

8 – Magic: The Gathering
MtG was a game that I loved and I’d play all the time for a while, but unfortunately I don’t have a group anymore for it. But I still love it for the deck construction aspect of it. You could build all sorts of crazy decks, and I think, almost as much as playing it, I loved finding an odd card that didn’t have an obvious way for it to work, but I would figure out a way to create a deck around it. Sometimes they were cool decks, and sometimes they failed horribly, but it was always fun to experiment. And then we got into commander which adds a challenge of only having a single copy of a card in the deck and a 100 yard deck, so there was always something new to try and build. I miss playing it as often sometimes, but it’s a classic and extremely popular game for a reason. It’s also addictive to open packs once you get into it.

7 – Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle
This is just a fun game as you get to play through the books, getting further in your education and improving your deck. You get to sling spells, get friends to help you and try and defeat everyone. The game starts out pretty simple, and I like that, because it can continue to add in mechanics and rules and cards for each book that you go to, which makes it more thematic. It does get longer the further in you go because, while you are theoretically getting better cards the longer it goes, in the later chapters, you’re dealing with the villains from the first books as well as the ones from the later books so that number always increases. But Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle is just a good deck building game and a good theme that will draw people in.

6 – Ascension
This is the most generic deck building game on the list. In it, you have a basic starting deck, you get to buy more cards that allow you to buy more cards or fight monsters that show up. You can combo things together with card draw and constructs, and that’s probably the only unique bit is that you have constructs that you can play out and they stay out while heroes go into the discard at the end of the turn. So you can vary your strategy by either going construct heavy or maybe hero and attack heavy or buy heavy. Each of them gives you a chance to win because you get points for killing monsters, but you can also get points for getting cards and some constructs are worth a lot of points. This is my preferred introduction to deck building.

5 – Clank! In! Space!
Some games take themselves seriously, but Clank! In! Space! is not one of those games. You’re an adventurer/thief, stumbling around Lord Eradikus’s spaceship, trying not to make too much clank so that you don’t get tracked down and knocked out. The cards are all references to other sci-fi things, and it just works really well. It’s a deck builder where you have a few different types of cards that can combo together to create some epic turns, if it shuffles out right, plus it’s push your luck with deck building as well, because you can go further into the spaceship to get a better treasure, but it’ll take you longer to get out and Lord Eradikus might get you before that happens. But if he doesn’t, you’ll be in a much better spot to win. The game is light fun with good replayability.

4 – Aeon’s End: War Eternal
Aeon’s End: War Eternal is such an interesting deck building game that gives you a chance to not have to worry about the randomness of your deck. When you buy cards, they go into the discard, when you spend your cards on a turn, they go to the discard, but cards that you spend on a turn, you can sort those. That’s not a big deal if you’re shuffling the deck, but you’re not, when you run out of cards, you just flip your deck, so it gives you the ability to potentially set-up hands. Add in the game play, which has an interesting spell casting mechanic where you need to prep them, tough monsters to fight, and a town to defend, the game gives you so much replayability just out of the base box and then there is more in expansions and other editions. It’s just a nice twist on deck building that works really well for my style of play, plus it’s cooperative.

3 – Arkham Horror: The Card Game
Another deck contrusction game on the list, Arkham Horror: The Card Game is a great experience creating your character so that they can investigate, attack, or deal with whatever might come up better for a given story. And then you get to take them through a campaign, so it’s not just a one off game, so between games you get to improve your deck so that you’re more prepared for the next part of the story. And characters, depending on their skills will be able to use certain types of cards better or will need help on some skills, so will need more of those cards in their decks, you can really tailor your investigator how you want.

2 – Marvel Champions
It was hard to know where to slot this one in, it’s deck construction, so you build your deck before the game, but it is so much fun. I’ve been writing about it a bunch recently, and it just works for me, all it’s missing is a campaign, which we’re getting. In it, you play as a superhero who is taking on the likes of Rhino, Ultron, or Green Goblin. What makes this work and be an interesting deck construction game is the different archetypes. So you could play someone like Spider-Man with defensive cards in his deck to keep him standing longer without having to flip back to the Peter Parker side, or you could be aggressive hoping to end the game faster. It gives you so many options when you’re constructing your deck. It just feels like taking your superhero up against a villain who has some grand or small scheme.

1 – Xenoshyft: Onslaught
Why is this my favorite, it’s actually fairly low rank on BGG, but the game is just a ton of fun, and I think it does some interesting things for a deck builder. You are never short money, which is nice, but when you buy cards and you are creating your defenses to stop an alien bug attack on your mining base, you can help other people as well. So you build up your defenses, but you can also help build up others, so even if someone has a bad card draw, you’ll be able to help them, or vice-a-versa. It’s just an interesting thing that makes the game feel even more cooperative in it’s nature and not something that you can do in many other deck building games. Plus, you’re blasting alien bug monsters, and I’m always down for that.

I’ve left a few games off of here that do have deck construction or deck building in them because I think that, while it’s important for those games, t here are other things that are also as big a part. Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon is one of them, but that one is a story driven survival game with deck construction being part of how you level up. The same goes for Gloomhaven, you can improve your hand of cards versus a deck there, but you can improve your modifier deck as you level up. I wanted to go with games where the deck construction is a huge part of the game. I think with the exception of Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle Earth, though you are using the deck for everything, you do need to really focus on the deck building part of the game.

There are a couple of notable deck building games that aren’t on the list. First, Legendary: A Marvel Deck Building Game, I just find that game to be okay. I think that there’s so much in the game now that it can be hard to keep track of everything and you can pretty easily end up with a less than ideal combo of heroes that don’t synergize as well as they could. If that happens, you just get stomped, and I feel like that is pretty common for that game. Dominion also didn’t make my list, and while I know that some of these games, if not all, wouldn’t have existed without Dominion, it doesn’t make Dominion a good game. It’s a pure deck building game, I’ll give it that, but it’s not thematic and it’s not nice to look at, and because it has a static market, someone who has played it more or played with a certain combo is going to be at an advantage because they know what to build immediately, and there’s always an optimal strategy. I like games that make me adjust as I go and stretch me that way, and I don’t think Dominion does that.

What are some of your favorite deck building games? Are there any, based off of what I like, that you think I should check out?

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