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Syncanite Foundation: Impressions & Unboxing

UPDATE: A New Manual for Syncanite Foundation can be found here.

This afternoon, my mailbox delivered a rather pleasant surprise: a review copy of Syncanite Foundation. A new boardgame of cutthroat political conspiracy that was kick-started last year.

Now, to be clear, the surprise wasn’t that the game arrived. I was fully aware it was on its way, having worked with the marketing team handling review copies. The real surprise hit the moment I laid eyes on the box. Before a single component was revealed, Syncanite Foundation was already speaking my language and making a strong first impression with its awesome sci-fi fantasy vibe.

I’m a relatively small-time reviewer, with only occasional appearances in some real journalism, thanks largely to a few connections I have to the game industry by sheer accident. The result of that in the last 10 years has been a loyal audience and a steady group of regular readers, but most publishers I work with that send me review copies tend to be fairly niche affairs. Interesting, often clever, but clearly operating within a smaller production scope. This, however, felt a bit different even though Syncanite Games is indeed a very indie operation. The box alone radiated confidence: polished, striking, and unmistakably professional. This didn’t just feel like a passion project punching above its weight; it was more like a heavyweight newcomer stepping into the ring for the first time. A new kid on the block, sure, but in the immortal words of Micky Goldmil, “You ain’t no bum, you ain’t no chump.”

As I cracked open the box, it became immediately clear that this was a game made with serious intent. There’s a level of care, cohesion, and sheer love in the presentation that demands to be met halfway. This wasn’t something I could casually glance over. If the game was going to put in this much effort, the least I could do was put on my reviewer hat properly and reciprocate.

So, with expectations officially raised and curiosity fully engaged, let’s get into it. This is going to be a two-part article review. First, we will do a sort of first impressions and unboxing, where I will simply look, read, and explore the game, that’s today. The second article will be a full review I will put together after a few play sessions with my local gaming group.

Overview

Cracking open the box, I did what I almost always do first: I reached for the rulebook. Not out of habit alone, but because I genuinely had no idea what Syncanite Foundation actually was. This isn’t a game riding on the coattails of a well-known franchise, yet from the moment you lift the lid, it’s obvious that this thing wants to be more than just cardboard and plastic. There is magic here. My instincts, as it turns out, were right on the money.

Pretty is an understatement; Syncanite Foundation laid out on the table is art.

The artwork immediately suggests a strange crossroads between science fiction and fantasy. At first glance, I caught faint echoes of Final Fantasy in the aesthetic, ornate, confident, and unapologetically dramatic. That impression lasted about five minutes. Once you start reading, it becomes very clear that this isn’t borrowing a skin from somewhere else. Whatever this is, it’s very much its own beast, an original work perhaps inspired by but not photocopied from other sources.

The introduction reads less like a rulebook and more like the opening chapter of a novel. The prose flows, sets a tone, and gently reminds you that you’re stepping into a fully realized world rather than learning how to push cubes around a board. It’s here that the curtain lifts: Syncanite Foundation is set in The World of Arkanite, a setting originally created as a novel and now being expanded into something far more ambitious, all by the confident hand of a designer with a plan. From the looks of it, this isn’t just a board game release; it’s a deliberate attempt to build a larger media universe. With a polished website, extensive lore, and clear narrative intent, this feels like a foundation stone rather than a one-off project. A respectful nod to the designer here: this is how you do worldbuilding.

One of my favorite things that publishers do is to create lore for a board game and give it proper treatment. Twilight Imperium’s Guide To The Imperium is a fantastic example.

I’ll admit, I’m an easy mark for games with a strong narrative backbone. I want my mechanics supported by meaning, my components backed by context. Syncanite Foundation wastes no time delivering exactly that. When I sit down to teach this game, we will be starting with story time, and that is going to resonate with my gaming crew, who are all avid role-players.

So what is this world about?

Without claiming deep knowledge just yet, it’s hard not to see familiar inspirations bubbling beneath the surface. There’s more than a hint of Dune in the way power revolves around a single, world-shaping resource. Touches of Game of Thrones appear in the ruthless political maneuvering, while the shadowy, authoritarian edge made me briefly wonder if a bit of Judge Dredd snuck in through the back door. At its core, this is a game about oligarchs, powerful figures who never sit on thrones, but who quietly decide who does. They pull strings, shape conflicts, and bend the world to their will… all while competing with each other for supremacy.

That competition centers around Syncanite itself: a miraculous, dangerous crystal that fuels industry, progress, and influence. Like the spice of Dune, Syncanite is less about what it is and more about what it represents. Control it, and you control the future. But, and this is important, it’s not the endgame. It’s simply the spark that lights the powder keg.

A steam entry for Syncanite Foundation can be found for a digital version of the game in the works, which speaks to the ambitions of its designers.

All of this lays the groundwork for what feels like a genuinely strong narrative-driven strategy game. Interestingly, while it shares no real mechanical DNA with Twilight Imperium, it gave me a similar vibe. Not in scope, mechanics or length, but in philosophy. War doesn’t seem to be the point here. Conflict is a tool, not a goal. The real game is intention: reading the table, manipulating perceptions, making promises you don’t intend to keep, and choosing the exact right moment to make your final move. This is supported by the core win objectives in the game, there are no victory points or progression-based conditions, it’s a winner-takes-all game, and anyone can win at any time by meeting one of the game’s politically fueled objectives.

Victory conditions are tied to one of five events that trigger under certain board game states. These events alter the rules of the game and can exist simultaneously. This speaks to the potential dynamics of the game and player impact. I love the concept.

Even from a first read-through of the rules, it’s obvious that Syncanite Foundation is going to live and die by table talk. Accusations, alliances, bluffs, quiet deals, and that inevitable moment where someone leans back and says, “Fine. Let’s do this.” All promises between the nuance of rules and the intended playstyle of the game.

All told, this feels like exceptionally solid footing for something special. Expectations are set, curiosity is high, and I am more than ready to get this one to the table.

The Components

Board gaming in the 21st century, especially anything with a Kickstarter pedigree, immediately triggers a small internal alarm for me. Years of experience have conditioned me to be cautious. I’ll say this plainly: I would rather play an ugly-as-sin cube pusher with brilliant design than an overproduced, miniature-stuffed spectacle that mistakes excess for depth. I’m a gamer first. Eye candy is a very distant second.

That said… reality has a way of complicating principles.

If you glance at my collection, you’ll find more than a few games that are undeniably gorgeous. Because the truth is, I don’t want to choose. I want both. I want a sharp design and visual presence. And if I’m being completely honest, even excellent games that are hard on the eyes tend to get passed over when it’s time to decide what hits the table. A game can be good, but if it looks like homework, it’s fighting an uphill battle.

All of which brings us to Syncanite Foundation, a game that wastes absolutely no time announcing itself as a looker.

Whoever oversaw the art direction, component choices, and final production had a clear, confident vision, and more importantly, an understanding of what modern board gamers expect visually. Every decision here feels deliberate. One can only hope (and I genuinely do) that this level of care extends just as deeply into the gameplay.

Because make no mistake: this is a stunning production. Not “nice.” Not “solid.” Stunning. This game is, quite frankly, a work of art.

Component quality is excellent across the board. Cards, tokens, and the main board all feel premium and durable, clearly built to survive repeated plays rather than a single unboxing glow. That said, this level of quality is increasingly the baseline expectation these days. Cutting corners on materials is no longer acceptable, so I’d frame this less as exceeding expectations and more as confidently meeting them.

One thing I always look for in any board game is the ability to assess the game state with a quick glance. The way markets are handled with cubes and a little tray makes looking up prices of goods quick and easy. Simple and straight to the point.

Where Syncanite Foundation truly flexes is in its artistic ambition.

The main board features richly detailed, geographically inspired digital artwork that is nothing short of gorgeous. Despite the visual density, clarity never suffers. Lines are crisp, iconography is readable, and information is presented cleanly, exactly what you want in a game that expects players to stare at the board for hours.

The tokens follow suit. Each is visually distinct, satisfyingly weighty, and just tactile enough to invite idle fiddling. They come surprisingly close to that coveted “poker chip” feel, the universal gold standard of board game tactility.

But the real showstopper here is the cards.

The artwork, line work, and layout are lavish to the point of indulgence. These aren’t just functional components; they’re miniature paintings. Each card feels like it deserves a pause, a moment to be appreciated before being put to work.

The cards are beautiful, there is no doubt, but the black cards with glossy, foil text make reading them very painful. Fortunatetly only select cards are done in this foil style, but as a whole, the legibility of cards is a pain. Its a real shame.

One problem this game will always have is that even with glasses, I struggle to comfortably read the cards, a terrible sin and flaw that undoes some of that extraordinary artistic effort. The choice of white text on a black background, while undeniably stylish and maybe even thematically appropriate, is a nightmare. Add to it that some cards are black with gold foil writing, and you’re quite literally pulling out a magnifying glass to read some of the cards. It’s a bit of a tragedy.

The Rules & Rulebook

The original rulebook that came with the game was a bit of a mess, but an updated rulebook was released (v 3.2) as of this writing that attempts to address the issues of the original.

As it stands, the rulebook included in the box does not actually teach you how to play Syncanite Foundation. Nor does it provide functional setup instructions. What it does offer is a high-level overview of the game’s ideas and intentions, almost as if it assumes the existence of a second, missing document that handles the practical business of actually getting the game to the table.

That overview, despite lacking instruction, is genuinely well written, the manual laid out well, and worth a read as a preview to the digital document available online (here).

A manual with a nice presentation that sets the tone, gives a good overview of a game, and sets the stage for an exciting tabletop experience is absolutely critical to the success of a game, in my opinion. I see it as something extra that should come in addition to a rules reference. Some companies have normalized this, and I would love to see more of it.

It’s evocative, inspiring, and a pleasure to read. It successfully communicates tone, ambition, and theme, and it left me excited to play. Unfortunately, when you reach the final page, that excitement gives way to confusion. You’re left wondering if a rules reference accidentally fell out of the box. As a teaching document, it’s simply insufficient. You cannot set up or play the game using this book alone. Fortunatetly the, the updated digital rulebook is the answer; it brings the game into alignment with the ambitions laid out in the one that comes in the box and gives you the needed instructions.

At its core, Syncanite Foundation appears to operate across a series of structured phases where players claim territory, gather resources, and leverage those resources to advance long-term agendas tied to distinct victory conditions. Much of this is done by manipulating the board state through influence cards and effects.

Where the game truly seems to come alive, however, is in its free-form political layer.

Negotiation, table talk, and outright manipulation aren’t just encouraged, they’re assumed. Influence cards can be played at almost any time, regardless of turn order. You can interrupt, retaliate, or derail plans mid-conversation. There’s something delightfully unhinged about the idea that someone can cut you off mid-sentence with a card that completely alters the situation. Conceptually, I love this. It carries a strong role-playing energy and leans hard into player-driven narrative.

You can see that clarity of writing is not Syncanites Foundations strength. Even in the game material like the Cycle Chronicle Guide, English and German are commonly mixed up, with elements not translated properly. In reality, this is not a big deal, but it illustrates a rush to release, rather than to perfect.

It also firmly places the game in what I’d call the “mean” category.

This is not a gentle experience. If the rules deliver on their promise, Syncanite Foundation will sit comfortably alongside games like Diplomacy or Game of Thrones: The Board Game, where betrayal isn’t a possibility; it’s a requirement. Ruthless play isn’t antisocial here; it’s the engine that drives the game.

For my group, that’s pure gold. We enjoy confrontational designs with sharp edges and “take that” mechanics, provided everyone at the table understands the social contract: this is a game, not a personality test. But years of gaming have also taught me that not every group can handle that style of play. If you tend to take setbacks personally, or if direct player aggression sours the mood, this game may very well bounce off you, though it’s far too early to make any final judgments. We will see how this pans out when I do the final review after a few play-throughs.

Mechanically, though, I’m deeply intrigued.

While comparisons are inevitable, Syncanite Foundation ultimately feels like a bit of a white elephant design, something unusual, ambitious, and difficult to neatly categorize. In that sense, it reminds me strongly of the work of Vlaada Chvátil, particularly titles like Through the Ages, Galaxy Trucker, and Mage Knight. Games that are unapologetically themselves, full of bold ideas, and largely incomparable to anything else on the shelf.

That kind of ambition is exactly what excites me as a gamer.

Conclusion

Syncanite Foundation is, without question, a visual feast. It presents a bold, confident concept and carries with it an enormous amount of potential. I genuinely want this game to succeed, and I’m eager to get it to the table. But art and enthusiasm alone doesn’t make a game playable or good. I can be a tough critic when it comes to gameplays, especially if you get my hopes up and make no mistakes, you’ve got me excited, Syncanite Foundation, the pressure is on!

An extraordinary amount of effort has clearly gone into the presentation, the worldbuilding, and the physical production. All admirable and original efforts worthy of praise and attention. Now it’s time for the real test, the mechanics and gameplay, to see if the game delivers on its promise.

With an updated rulebook freshly printed out, a game session scheduled and an excited crew already hyped up from my depiction of the game, it’s time to play some Syncanite Foundation!

UPDATE: A New Manual for Syncanite Foundation can be found here.



Best of List, Board Game Reviews

10 Amazing Games No One Knows About

In the modern board-gaming landscape, new releases don’t just “come out”, they burst forth in a tidal wave, fueled by Kickstarter dreams, indie ambitions, and the eternal hope that this design will finally be the one that breaks through. With hundreds of amateur publishers and small creators tossing their hats into the ring, it’s become all but impossible to keep up with everything hitting the shelves.

To put it in perspective: this year alone, over 500 new board games dropped on BGG. Five hundred! Even if you made board gaming your full-time job and played a new title every single day of the year, you’d still fall short. And you’d also probably lose all your friends, because scheduling that many game nights is basically a war crime.

In this chaotic release environment, countless titles slip through the cracks, many deservedly so… but plenty of these are absolute gems that simply never found their audience. And that’s where today’s list comes in.

We went spelunking through the forgotten tunnels of board-game obscurity to dig up 10 fantastic games you’ve probably never even heard of, but absolutely should have.

Welcome to today’s topic: 10 Board Games No One Knows About. Let’s shine a light on the lost, the overlooked, and the criminally underplayed. In no particular order!

New Angeles (2016) – BGG Rank 1561

New Angeles is what happens when you mix corporate greed, city management, light backstabbing, and a cooperative game night that absolutely won’t stay cooperative.

Set in the Android universe, players take on the roles of mega-corporations shaping the future of a glittering sci-fi metropolis. Everyone has the same broad goal, to keep the city from collapsing into chaos, but each corporation has very different ideas on what “helping” looks like. And, of course, one player is secretly a Federalist whose only job is to watch the city burn.

Mechanically, it’s incredibly approachable. Each round, players propose agendas, essentially the policies the city will follow that turn, and then argue, plead, negotiate, and occasionally bribe their tablemates into voting for their preferred option. The whole experience plays out like a futuristic city council meeting where everyone is both a lobbyist and a special interest group.

The fun isn’t in complex systems or dense rules, the fun is in the conversation. Every vote becomes a mini political debate. Every agenda becomes a chance to sway the room. And every round becomes a tense balancing act between helping the city, helping yourself, and trying to figure out if that one player who keeps making bad decisions is incompetent or just the Federalist.

It’s dynamic, it’s social, it’s narratively rich, and it’s honestly one of the most underappreciated designs of 2016. If you love games where interaction is the real engine, New Angeles is a masterpiece hiding in plain sight.

Condottiere (1995) – BGG Rank 1034

There are a lot of trick-taking games in the world, enough to fill a small museum or at least a very judgmental shelf. But I’ll say this without hesitation: Condottiere is the best trick-taking game that ever briefly shined, vanished, and left most of the hobby tragically unaware of its brilliance.

It’s themed around the late-medieval Italian Renaissance, but does not require a working knowledge of 15th-century mercenary politics to enjoy it. That odd theme, however, is probably why half the gaming world missed this one entirely. But do yourself a favor, don’t let the dusty history-book veneer scare you off.

What makes Condottiere special is its razor-sharp blend of trick-taking and area control. Winning battles on the map requires winning tricks, but the real strategy comes from managing your hand over multiple rounds, playing the long game, and anticipating how every card you commit or hold back, will shape your eventual path to conquest. It’s a simple to learn, deeply strategic card game, filled with the kind of “I can’t believe you just did that” table moments that only smart card games can produce.

Despite its rules fitting into a three-minute explanation, Condottiere is a game you’ll return to for years, trying to unravel its layers. Psychology plays as big a role as the cards themselves. Bluffing, tempo, reading opponents, timing your retreats, it all matters.

It’s beautiful, elegant, endlessly replayable, and somehow still the trick-taking masterpiece no one talks about. If you love the genre, this is the one game you absolutely need in your collection. This is THE trick-taking game lovers of the genre must own!

XCOM: The Board Game (2015) BGG RANK 1003

Based on the beloved (and occasionally soul-crushing) XCOM PC series, XCOM: The Board Game takes the digital classic’s signature panic-inducing time pressure and somehow makes it even more stressful, in a good way. While the video game might not be universally known outside PC circles, it’s still a major piece of gaming history, and the board game leans hard into the two core pillars that made its digital ancestor so memorable.

First, XCOM has always been about time. The alien invasion escalates, the clock is ticking, and you’re constantly forced to act before you’re really ready. That’s central to the video game, and brilliantly recreated on the tabletop.

Second, it’s about scarcity. Not enough money, not enough soldiers, not enough satellites, and certainly not enough calm among the players as they frantically try to hold the planet together with duct tape and prayer.

The board game captures both elements by doing something almost unheard of in traditional strategy titles: it’s played in real time with an app barking orders at you. No leisurely planning, no “give me a minute to think,” no zen-like strategizing. Instead, players take on specialized roles, Commander, Squad Leader, Central Officer, Chief Scientist, and must make rapid decisions that directly affect each other, often without enough time to actually talk things through. You simply have to trust your teammates… or at least hope they won’t accidentally doom the planet.

Surprisingly, the app remains unpredictable even after multiple plays. Unlike many app-driven titles that eventually fall into patterns, XCOM keeps the tension high and the threats variable.

The result is a glorious mash-up of party-game panic and cooperative strategic depth. It’s fast, frantic, and far more engaging than most people expected, which makes its lukewarm reception all the more baffling. Honestly, the only thing missing is a hidden traitor role. A saboteur would have been chef’s kiss, especially once a group has mastered the basics and the difficulty starts to dip.

Still, even without the extra chaos, XCOM: The Board Game is a wildly underrated gem that delivers one of the most unique cooperative experiences out there.

Red Rising (2021) BGG Rank 1035

A lot of games on this list make me raise an eyebrow when I see how low they rank, but Red Rising? Honestly, I get it. My first play left me pretty unimpressed, and if someone in my group hadn’t insisted we give it another shot, I might have walked away thinking it was all style and no substance. Thankfully, I was very wrong.

The theme certainly didn’t help its visibility, Red Rising is based on a relatively obscure sci-fi novel series of the same name (which, for the record, is fantastic and absolutely worth reading). But don’t worry: prior knowledge of space aristocracies and color-coded castes is not required to enjoy the game.

Mechanically, Red Rising is a deck-crafting card game with a dash of resource management, but the real hook is the interplay between the cards you pick and the cards you leave behind. Every card in your hand is a potential point engine, combo, or strategy, but everything you don’t take becomes an opportunity for someone else. The board develops into a kind of communal buffet where every choice you make can feed an opponent if you’re not careful.

There’s a subtle push-and-pull as you manipulate the stacks on the board while shaping your own hand, and the tension ramps up thanks to an intentionally fuzzy end-game trigger. You never quite know how many turns you have left to perfect your hand, so there’s constant pressure to stay flexible and ready for the game to end at any moment.

It’s surprisingly thinky. The pieces themselves aren’t individually mind-blowing, and the first play or two can feel chaotic, almost random. But once you understand how the card synergies mesh and how the timing works, the game snaps into focus. Suddenly, it becomes a fascinating little puzzle with far more depth than you’d expect.

I won’t claim Red Rising is a misunderstood masterpiece, but it is a clever, unique card game doing things you rarely see elsewhere, and it deserved far more attention than it ever got.

Nations The Dice Game (2014) BGG 1237

Nations: The Dice Game belongs to a very sacred category I like to call:
“Games That Replace Games I Despise but Non-Gamers Keep Asking For.” And in this case, the villain is Yahtzee, a game I have played far more times than any human should, entirely against my will, simply because people like rolling dice and praying for six-of-a-kind.

Enter Nations: The Dice Game, a civilization builder that also involves rolling dice and hoping for the best… but with this miraculous addition: actual strategy. You can mitigate luck. You can plan ahead. You can shape your civilization in ways that reduce dependence on the Dice Gods. In other words, you can actually make decisions that matter, something Yahtzee has never heard of.

The theme is fun, the rules are dead simple, and it scratches the same “roll dice, get stuff” itch while being roughly a 1,000% improvement in every possible aspect over Yahtzee. It plays fast, works perfectly as a filler, and it’s endlessly replayable. And if you end up loving it, there’s even an expansion (Unrest) that adds a bit more punch.

It’s quick, clever, and, most importantly, it’s the perfect antidote to another forced evening of Yahtzee.

Starship Catan (2001) BGG Rating 1627

I can’t say I’m shocked to see Starship Catan ranked as low as it is. Honestly, for a title this obscure, its ranking is practically generous. And normally, I’m not a big fan of Catan-branded anything—Settlers has never been my jam, and most of its spin-offs tend to stretch out a simple formula into games that last twice as long as they should.

But Starship Catan is different. This two player Catan game actually has some chops, in fact I would say to put it bluntly: this is the best Catan game ever made. Better than Settlers, better than Starfarers, better than any variant with sheep, grain, or plastic rocket ships. And the fact that it’s strictly a two-player experience is just icing on the cake, because it avoids the #1 problem most Catan games suffer from: taking forever despite offering fairly basic decisions.

Starship Catan takes the familiar Catan concepts, trading, upgrading, resource management and transforms them into a tight, engaging two-player race. The game gives you multiple ways to mitigate, improve, or outright remove dice luck, which alone makes it feel like a breath of fresh air compared to the usual “roll and pray” Catan experience.

It’s short, smart, and surprisingly replayable. I bought my copy back in 2001, and somehow, after nearly 25 years, it still hits the table regularly. My daughter now plays it too, this is one of those games that proves staying power doesn’t come from flash, but from clean, clever design.

It’s fun. It’s simple. And it’s absolutely overlooked. If you enjoy Catan, or even just wish Catan was better, this is a must-own.

Age of Civilization (2019) BGG Rank 1716

I’m a sucker for a good civilization-building game. I own plenty, I play plenty, and I love when a designer manages to cram the essence of a sprawling 4X epic into something you can knock out in the time it takes to make a cup of coffee. Age of Civilization fits that description perfectly.

This game is a tiny, abstracted Civ-builder that manages to feel strategic, tense, and satisfying, all in 15 to 30 minutes. It’s a bit of a race, a bit of an efficiency puzzle, and a whole lot of clever design wrapped into a filler-length package. And full disclosure: I don’t even own a physical copy. I’ve played it relentlessly on BoardGameArena, which should tell you how good it is despite its humble size.

I can’t say I’m shocked that it’s overlooked. Fillers almost never climb high on BGG rankings. Still, it’s wild to see heavyweight short games like 7 Wonders Duel and The Crew sitting comfortably in the top 100 while brilliant little titles like this one languish in the 1700s. Don’t get me wrong, those are great games, but if they are in the top 100, so should Age of Civilization.

Age of Civilization is tight, thinky, and surprisingly competitive. Every decision, literally every single one, matters. There’s almost no randomness; most of the information you need is visible from the very first round, which means the game rewards planning, timing, and adaptability over luck.

Even better, while most strong fillers are two-player affairs, this one works beautifully at 2, 3, or 4 players, and remains highly replayable across all counts.

Short, strategic, and punchy, Age of Civilization is an underappreciated gem that deserves far more love than it gets.

Aristeia! (2017) BGG Rank 1903

I’m convinced part of the reason Aristeia! is so overlooked is because at first glance it looks like some kind of Japanese anime gladiator game. The art style is loud and unusual, and I never would’ve bought it for myself. But sometimes being a reviewer means you get surprises in the mail, occasionally great ones.

Case in point: Corvus Belli sent me a review copy of their newest miniature game (Warcrow), and tucked inside the box was Aristeia!. And here’s the twist: while Warcrow was solid and fun, it was Aristeia! that absolutely stole the show.

The game is a fast, competitive, sports-arena skirmish played on a hex grid. You control a small team of unique characters, complete with minis, each with their own abilities. Gameplay mixes clever card-driven tactics, slick movement mechanics, and objective control into a tight, engaging package. The whole thing feels like a tactical TV bloodsport, and it sings on the table.

What surprises me the most is that this never became a hit among miniature gamers. It’s practically engineered for them. It’s like a miniatures skirmish game in filler form: Don’t have time for a full game of Warcrow or Infinity? No problem, play a best-of-three match of Aristeia! in under an hour.

The rules are straightforward, the gameplay is fast and tactical, and there’s plenty of list-building and team customization. And if you fall in love with it, there are expansions galore.

It ended up being one of my favorite discoveries of the year. My daughter and I play it constantly.

A fantastic, tightly designed, and criminally underrated game.

Illuminati (1987) BGG Rank 2607

This one, I have to admit, frustrates me. Not because the game is bad, quite the opposite. Illuminati is one of the all-time greats. It has been in print almost continuously since 1987, and despite that longevity it still sits criminally under-appreciated. Practically a gaming injustice.

I can almost forgive its low profile, though, because Steve Jackson’s design reputation has always been a bit niche. Old-school gamers like me, who cut our teeth in the ’80s on Axis & Allies, Dune, Advanced Civilization, and other titans, know these classics well. But many of them, including Illuminati, have remained somewhat obscure despite loyal cult followings.

To me, Illuminati is the ultimate psychological competition. It is an argument waiting to happen. Betrayal, manipulation, and cut-throat mind games aren’t just possibilities, they’re the core mechanics.

You’re trying to build a growing power structure by adding organizations to your Illuminati web. But the stronger you become, the more exposed you are. The only way to rise is to make someone else fall. Every decision is a balancing act of threat perception, convincing others you’re harmless while quietly setting up the perfect final strike.

Its a mean game and that might explain why it’s struggled in the modern age of friendlier, more cooperative designs. Illuminati demands ruthlessness from everyone at the table, and not all gamers enjoy taking (or receiving) a knife in the back.

Still, it remains, without question in my mind, a stone-cold classic. Bold, unique and fiercely interactive. A true original that deserves far more love than it gets.

War Room (2019) BGG Rating 2198

Alright, my bias is about to show. War Room is my favorite board game of all time. I consider it dangerously close to perfect in how it executes its design goals, and it is an absolute blast to play.

That said, I’m not remotely surprised to see it sitting in the 2000s on BGG. Honestly, I’m a little surprised it ranks that high. The reasons are obvious: this is a massive, all-day event game that practically demands 4–6 players and devours 10–12 hours. Add in its truly eye-watering price tag, and yeah… I get why it’s not climbing the charts.

But leaving it off this list would be dishonest, because War Room is responsible for some of my most cherished gaming memories. My group plays it every year on my birthday, no questions asked. When Chris’s birthday rolls around, everyone knows what we’re doing: we’re setting up War Room.

Epic doesn’t even begin to cover it. You and your allies reenact the most iconic and devastating conflict in human history, World War II, in all its tragic, sprawling intensity. Hidden orders, bucketloads of dice rolling, resource management, and breathtaking large-scale planning combine into an experience unlike anything else I’ve ever played.

Nothing matches its scope. Nothing comes close to its ambition.

I love it. Enough said.

List complete.

Best of List, Board Game Reviews

Highlights and Let Downs of 2024

When I put 2024 down on digital paper, I feel like I live in the future. It’s hard to believe it’s 2024 and even harder to believe the year is almost over.

I would make the argument that it’s been a great year for gaming but frankly, my gaming life has been full of ups and downs this year, and tons of really surprising results. While there has been some great gaming this year, had you shown me this highlight reel at the start of the year, I would not have believed it.

There is a lot of games to talk about so sit back and enjoy, it’s going to be a serious wall of text today!

Hegemony: Lead Your Class To Victory

It’s a tough learning curve, but unquestionably one of the most unique games I have played in a long time.

This was among my favorite discoveries in 2024, even though it was technically released in 2023. It’s a robust and very crunchy Euro with a lot of psychology built into it and a fair amount of cut-throat competition. It’s not something I would recommend for everyone, but for groups like mine who love to argue and play “take that” games, it’s right up our alley. The interesting part about this game is how all of these asymmetrical mechanics come together. Testing this game must have been a real hell because there is so much interaction, and so many game states possible, it’s kind of crazy.

This one came out for the first time at our big board gaming weekend in the summer, and it was a smash hit with everyone, we talked about it endlessly afterward and everyone agreed it needed to be played repeatedly! That was the first and last time we played this game.

This is not a reflection on the quality of the game but more of a reflection of its length and its harsh learning curve. It took us a solid 7 hours for our first game. Like Through The Ages which I will talk about a little later, it’s just a long, complex game and it’s a bit of a pain in the ass to teach. It also has one of those rule sets where every single micro rule and the order it’s executed in, is a gaming-breakingly important thing, meaning, play one tiny rule wrong and the entire face of the game changes. So playing the EXACT rules to the letter in this hyper-crunchy game is critical to a fair gaming experience, but because of its complexity, it’s easy to get them wrong. This creates this unusual quandary where you need to put together a dedicated, crack-squad willing to invest in learning the game on their own so that everyone at the table is efficient and knows how everything works. Without that, you end up with a 3-hour game that takes 7 hours to play.

It’s a great game but man, it’s tough to build up the will to play it.

Part engine builder, part thought experiment, Hegemony is an exceptionally unique game design that I think if you and your gaming group are hardcore, veteran board gamers that love that Euro crunch, this is a must-own. Easily a candidate for the best game I played all year. That said, it’s not very approachable and I think most tables will find that it’s a bit too much.

Warhammer 40k got a 10th edition

Way back in the 6th edition days, I was a huge Warhammer 40k player. We played a lot, I had two armies (Tyranids and Necrons) and I did the entire hobby thing from A to Z. I honestly never in a million years would have guessed that in 2024 we would be going back to it, I thought I was done with 40k forever. It’s return to our gaming groups consciousness is one of the wildest events of the year.

The game fell out of favor in my group over a decade ago, replaced by modern miniature games that focused on stronger gameplay and in many cases like Star Wars X-Wing and Star Wars Armada, cut the entire hobby part out of the game with pre-constructed and pre-painted miniatures. This became the norm in my group and even when we did buy into more hobby-centric games, we usually played those with unpainted miniatures like Songs of Ice and Fire for example or they were isolated to small parts of our group as the case was with Bolt Action for example. In either case, the choice of miniature game was always heavily influenced by gameplay quality over “hobby focus”.

Warhammer 40k and the entire hobby part of the miniature gaming hobby made a big comeback when the 10th edition dropped last year. In 2024, shockingly, there was a lot of both, gaming and hobby in the 40k universe in my group. I rebuilt my Tyranid army and several members of our group who had never experienced 40k bought into the game for the first time. It became a thing.

I’m pretty proud of my Tyranids, this towering giant took over 20 hours to complete. When people say Warhammer 40k is a hobby, this is no joke and it’s good to keep in mind that it’s a pretty expensive hobby at that.

What I can say about Warhammer 40k is that it’s still a pretty shitty game from a mechanics perspective. Especially compared to modern-designed miniature games that focus on strong gameplay. I think anyone who plays 40k knows that the mechanics of the game are there to facilitate the hobby part of the game and playing it is just something fun you do when you and your friends get together to show off your miniatures. As a game, it leaves a lot to desire.

Warhammer 40k is almost a role-playing sort of experience. You work on your army, read the manuals and codexes, do your list building, and absorb other content like the animated series and the novels. It’s sort of a story-driven, hobby where the game is just a thing you “participate” in to complete the circle. If you’re looking for a good competitive miniature game, pretty much anything else is better, but so far as the hobby goes, GW makes the miniatures; no question about it.

It’s a lot of fun but in more ways than one, 40k is more of a robust activity than a game and I think as long as you can accept that and not get frustrated by the crazy imbalances and mechanical weirdness, it really is a fun activity.

I will say however that 10th edition is probably the best version of the game mechanically in all the years I have played 40k. Still not good by any stretch of the imagination but a vast improvement over previous editions and GamesWorkshop has gone to great lengths to try to keep the game as balanced as they can. A+ for effort even if the final grade, is a C- and I’m being very generous here.

If you’re thinking about Warhammer 40k, I think it’s important to know that you do not get into 40k for the game. You get into it for the fantasy storytelling, the art, the books, the animated series and most importantly the hobby of building and painting miniatures. That is what 40k is first and foremost and it does a fantastic job of it. The game is an afterthought. It’s fun too, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not what I would call “mechanically good” fun, more like we get to play with the toys we made kind of fun.

Empire Of The Sun

Empire of the Sun is a grid-based, card-driven historical war game that covers the entire Pacific War. A more complete game has never existed.

I play Empire of the Sun as a matter of habit every year, not to suggest I don’t enjoy it, I do, in fact, it’s an addiction that must be fed but this year, it exploded. I played a ton of games, probably more this year alone than the previous 4-5 years combined thanks to a fantastic online community.

I do not generally recommend Empire Of The Sun to most people. This is a highly complex historical war game with an extreme level of simulation and deep strategic interactions. It is not for the faint of heart and all I can say is that as a gamer you should know if a historical chit-game is for you or not. This is a very specific, very niche style of game that is or is not in your wheelhouse.

That said, I can’t think of a game on my yearly playlist that I look forward to more than Empire of the Sun. Each year when it comes out, I know I’m about to experience a masterpiece, and this game never disappointments. I typically play it with online opponents as it can be very difficult to play this one in a single sitting with a live opponent. In fact, even online, a typical game of Empire of the Sun can take the better part of a month to finish even if you do live sessions of 3-4 hours at a time on a weekly basis. It is a 12+ hour game for most partners and can take considerably more than that if you suffer from analysis paralysis, which is something this game infects you with if you don’t already suffer from the condition.

Mark Herman is one of my favorite game designers because he makes games that he loves to play and it shows in his designs. A true master of his craft, but like all masters, it takes some soul searching to understand the how and why of his designs. There is a personal connection you build with his games that will have you digging far beyond just the mechanics and design of the game, you will find yourself watching Pacific War documentaries, reading history books and imagining what the world must have been for people in the Pacific War. This is not just a game, it’s an exercise for the brain and it’s good for you!

If that doesn’t appeal to you, avoid this one, it’s for the historical buffs and no one else.

Through The Ages: A New Story of Civilization

Through The Ages has been near the top of my all-time favorite games for a long time, but I’m very careful and picky about who I pull it out with. Pick the wrong people and you are looking at a 6-12 hour game that will suck the soul right out of your body.

This long-time favorite and staple of my collection usually collects a lot of dust because it’s just a very long and robust game, that can be dreadfully slow when playing with new or inexperienced gamers.

Fortunately this year I managed to get it to the table a couple of times with some veterans and not only was it a pleasant experience, but with some great competition it was lightning fast which proves two things. First, it doesn’t have to be a long game, this game can be played in under 3 hours with experienced players who know what they’re doing and two, it’s still one of the most competitive games on my shelf, with brutally tight end games.

I will warn you that this game normally takes 3-4 people the better part of 6 to 8 hours to play and can take upwards of 12+ hours to complete. Yeah, I’m not joking here, so be prepared for some long games when learning this one. People who suffer from analysis paralysis will be in hell and drag this game out endlessly, if that sounds like you, this is one to avoid. You need to be thinking ahead and making key decisions so that you’re your turn is nice and fast, executed with precision, that is the only way to get this game’s excessive length down.

I will say that so far as Civilization builders go, meaning games that give you that Sid Meier Civ feel, this is one of the best around.

For those out there looking for a similar gaming experience but want a larger group and shorter game, Nations is a pretty decent substitute and fits the same niche playstyle. It’s a great game in its own right, but some argue it’s a very “ugly” looking game.

This is a classic civilization builder, its tight competitive nature, unique dynamic card-driven gameplay, and diverse interactions make this one of the best of its kind. There is a reason this game has been at the top of BBG lists for decades! But yeah, you need to find the right people to play with, this is not a “let’s just play with anyone” kind of game, not unless you’re ready to spend an entire day playing it.


Sekigahara: The Unification of Japan

Stratego was one of the earliest gaming experiences I had as a kid and this game definitely reminds me of those days.

I was very late to the party with this 2011 release, but Sekigahara is a well-established war game in the community, sitting pretty in the number 6 spot among war games on BBG and 207 overall. That is pretty impressive for a dry block-based historical war game based on medieval Japanese warfare. I bought into this one and managed to get it to the table a few times this year and color me impressed.

There is a solid and obvious reason for this popularity. This is an extraordinary game combining tactical and strategic dudes on a map war game that is card-driven. The core feature of the game is the hidden unit concept built into blocks that make up game units similar to classic games like Stratego which gives this game a great “feel” at the table. I think the bulk of the games fun factor has to be this idea of setting up your units and board positions, with a strategic plan based on the minimal information you have about enemy positions and strengths.

It’s a very clean, yet tense competitive war game that is easy to understand but difficult to master. I’m not at all surprised about its status among war gamers but I do think that even at 207 on the overall list which is quite high for a historical war game, this one is grossly underrated. This is one of the most unique titles I have seen in quite a while, I can’t believe I’m only just now discovering it. This is one of those games you can introduce to anyone, there is nothing complicated about it at all. It’s a kind of chess-like atmosphere with a fun theme.

Very highly recommended for pretty much anyone interested in competitive two-player war games.

Underwater Cities

Very streamlined game with a fantastic theme, dynamic mechanics, and that easy to learn – impossible to master core that elevates it above the competition.

I’m a big fan of Terraforming Mars, I play it a lot and there are a few games that I can point to and say “If you like Terraforming Mars, you should try…..”. Well, Underwater Cities is that game.

It’s not exactly a duplication or replication of the mechanics, but it scratches a similar itch with its dynamic engine-building – card-driven gameplay. Also, like Terraforming Mars, you can’t just play this game once and feel satisfied, you will find yourself obsessing about how to play it more efficiently, how to make each card play more effectively and above all else trying to find that “killer” strategy in a game that is far too dynamic to ever definitely resolve.

This is not a puzzle that can be solved as is the case with so many Euro-style games, the sand is constantly shifting under your feet and you have to adapt and overcome using a unique approach in each game, with a surprising amount of game states. It’s what I love about Terraforming Mars and it’s what I love about Underwater Cities.

Fantastic game that looks amazing on the table, it’s easy to teach but impossible to master. It’s what Euro gamers crave, a fresh take on a familiar engine building formula. If you haven’t tried it yet, this 2018 release should be at the top of your list.

Everdell

This cute game about animals living in the forest has some teeth. Lots of potential!

I only played it once for the first time this year and still, it made a very strong impression on me. This rather simple resource management, worker placement and card management game is exceedingly thinky. There are clear strategies driven by a wide range of dynamics in the game that create a great sense of competitiveness while being very straightforward from a mechanics perspective. Very tight scoring and a bit of a race between engine building and scoring. The entire game runs like a well-oiled machine, clearly the result of thorough playtesting. I see a lot of potential for replayability here, but at this stage, given that I have only played it once, that is hard to say.

What I can say is that despite a single play, this is on my “stuff to keep an eye on” as I see a lot of potential in this one. The accolades and popularity of this game are warranted.

Eclipse: The Second Dawn For The Galaxy

It’s a hit-or-miss experience, for such an expensive game I would not recommend it over far better games like Twilight Imperium. It’s not a bad game, it’s just not good enough for the price tag

This is a game I keep going back and forth on and I think a big part of the reason for it is that the gaming experience itself can be hit or miss from session to session. Sometimes it plays like a tight, 4x strategy game with battles, technology and lots of sneaky and tricky moves (exactly what you hope for). All the stuff you hope to get out of a 4x civ builder. Other times it’s just this horrifically boring and predictable Euro where essentially nothing interesting happens and someone wins by default in about the most anticlimatic way a board game can end.

I hold to it to account for its supposed claim that it’s “a better” or “lighter” Twilight Imperium, it’s not, it’s not even in the same league. In the infamous words of Will Smith, “Keep my Twilight Imperium’s name out of your mouth!”, a Twilight Imperium anything, this game is not.

That said I do love the aesthetic and the game is well-designed even if the experience can land flat. I would argue it’s way too expensive to recommend just to see for yourself if you can live with this unpredictable result, in fact, I would go further and say, don’t buy this game if you’re looking for a 4x experience because it does a poor job of it. This is more for Euro gamers who want a space theme and even there, be ready for some disappointing end games.

Imperial Struggle

Easily one of the best games in my collection, I just wish it hit the table more often!

I managed to squeeze in only three games of Imperial Struggle this year to my sad disappointment and frankly, I just wish someone made a digital version of this game already like they did for Twilight Struggle because I so desperately want to make this a nightly thing for me. I love this game but it’s kind of a pain to get to the table. This might end up being the game that I decided to digitalize myself just for my own purposes, but I’m just not sure my programming skills are up to the challenge. This game has a lot of moving parts.

It’s a fairly robust game in terms of complexity and strategic thinking and while the well is super deep, it’s sometimes a bit anti-climatic as the game can and often feels like it ends prematurely. Now I know that this is because of skill level differences, this is one of those games like Dune (Rex) where quite literally what you do in round 1 might end the game right then and there. Normally with some experience that is never going to happen but, yeah, this game has some very subtle nuances that can create exciting, long and tight games, or just these horrific early crushing defeats.

It ranks as one of my favorite games of all time, I think it is a worthy contender for the lifestyle game list but I just feel like I don’t play it often enough to be certain of that.

If you like Twilight Struggle, it doesn’t necessarily mean you are going to love this game even if these two games have a lot in common and are from the same creator. Twilight Struggle is more of a card game while Imperial Struggle is more of an action economy game. They are both from the influence area control genre, but not quite the same experience.

That said I still hold that Imperial Struggle is the better game… there I said it.

Great Western Trail

This is my modern-day Monopoly, I’m happy to play it anytime and with anyone. It’s just a fun, laid-back time, win or lose it’s always entertaining.

Great Western Trail continues to hit my “must play it” list periodically and I think I ended up playing it 5 or 6 times in person and a whole bunch more on BoardGameArena (online). In fact, I have 113 lifetime plays so far in this game and honestly, I’m not even remotely done with it yet. I crave it with regularity.

Why? Well, I think the biggest boon of this game is that it’s just a very clever mechanic and it’s kind of unique compared to most Euros. The unique engine building and heavier interaction between players, make this a Euro you don’t feel like you’re playing solo. It just works and it’s fun. Sometimes a good game is difficult to explain but I put this game in the same sort of ranking world as I would put Monopoly. To me, this is a family game. Sure it’s a bit more complex and has a few moving parts, but it has those types of rules that you just kind of remember after a few plays and they stick with you.

I have not gotten a chance yet to try some of the new versions of the game, there are two in total now, Argentina and New Zealand. They look interesting and are on my 2025 list of stuff to play.

Raiders Of The North Sea

Very fast worker placement game, great for a quickie, yet it has that robust, satisfying worker placement Euro feel. Great art too, I love looking at this game.

My daughter likes this one a lot, not to say I don’t but because of her we ended up playing it many-many times this year and it sort of became a thing.

As a whole, this game is a pretty straightforward worker placement game and one of the simpler ones from the Shem Philips line of games which includes stuff like Paladins of the West Kingdom, Viscounts of the West Kingdom, Architects of the West Kingdom and a bunch more. Good games all, I have tried most of them at this point but I still find Raiders of the North Sea, the first of the series I ever tried to be the most approachable and fun.

It’s a kind of combination of resource management, worker placement, and quasi-race. The race part is mostly because it is a pretty fast game that ends a lot quicker than you think. My daughter and I go like 30-45 minutes tops, so whatever your strategy is, there isn’t time to refocus or adapt, you have to ride it out and see what happens.

Most games are quite tight, generally, you’re going win this one by a hair unless you drop the ball so it’s always fun. Every move counts.

Great game, like Great Western Trail, it is a simple family game, very streamlined, and easy to understand the strategies behind it.

Star Wars Unlimited

One of the best CCG’s to come out in a very long time. Not quite a replacement for Star Wars Destiny in my opinion, but I’m kind of biased, I loved that dice mechanic. Still, so far as CCG’s go, this one is so tight, so clever, I’m not at all surprised at its success so far.

There is no question that Star Wars Unlimited stole the show this year. It’s been one of the biggest rises and most played games of the year in my group. I have so far collected all three expansions for the game and I don’t see any slowdown in my group. We love this one.

I would say it’s probably the first collectible card game since Lord of the Rings the Living Card game that I have felt comfortable just buying into it Blind. Star Wars Destiny turned out to be a big disappointment, more on that in a minute. Legend of the Five Rings was discontinued and Game Of Thrones the card game just never took off in my group. This is the first in a long time I think has some hope for becoming a Magic: The Gathering-type game where it becomes a filler for all occasions and a lifestyle choice in our group.

Very well balanced so far, with clever dueling mechanics and they are very wisely making each expansion a kind of mechanically isolated thing so that there is a kind of deck reset every time one comes out. This is great for our group as we all love deck building and it’s nice to have to sort of “re-think” strategy each time a new expansion comes out. It revitalizes the game each time a new expansion comes out and get’s us excited about getting together to play.

Love it so far, really hoping this one sticks the landing long term.

Now I want to say a thing or two about Star Wars Destiny, Star Wars Unlimited ugly stepbrother. I recently made a Top 10 Collectable Card game list where Star Wars Destiny landed in the number 5 spot, but its position on this list is mainly because the game is discontinued and because it was a CCG and it should not have been. Star Wars Destiny should have been using the Living Card Game format FFG is kind of famous for and had they done that, I think it would be Destiny not Unlimited we are talking about today. I personally think that Destiny is a much better game, but it was so poorly managed that it sort of self-destructed. It was a real bummer. Thank god that Unlimited came along and filled this gap.

Other Worthy Mentions

The above is a very inconclusive list, I played a lot more than what is here, but this article is about highlights and I think that covers the bulk of the standouts for me. There were several other games I will quickly mention here for posterity that received table time this year.

Terraforming Mars is always on my agenda each year, we played it several times this year and it continues to be the masterpiece from 2016 that just keeps on giving. It’s as good as it always has been and the expansions for this one do improve the game in so many ways, really refreshing the entire experience. I put this one on my lifestyle games list, it’s a staple of my gaming life these days and it’s one of my default recommendations to all board game fans.

War Room got played as it always does on my birthday (and hopefully always will). Love this one, but it’s 12+ hour monster that I find once a year is plenty. I never recommend it, it’s a niche game, but from my perspective, it’s one of the best games ever made. So a bit of a quandary. Let’s just say you have to be a “type” to appreciate a game like this. I suggest checking out my full review on this one.

Lord of the Rings the living card game naturally hit the table repeatedly as it always does for me each year, another lifestyle game I play regularly, mostly solo. I put this one into kind of a niche category as well because I find it’s sort of an all-or-nothing game. Either you collect everything and go full-on crazy, or skip it entirely. The same way I feel about most collectible card games. For a Lord of the Rings fan however, this is one of the best games ever made. I wrote a revised article in 2023 that surprisingly has become one of the most visited articles on the blog.

Lord of the Rings The Living Card game is 10 years old, but if the hits on this site are any indication it’s currently more popular than it has ever been in the past. This may be the result of 2nd edition being released in 2023.

Things on the agenda for 2025

2025 is looking very exciting already, there is a lineup on my shelf of games that are going to get played come hell or high water, and a few I still need to pick up (or am waiting to show up).

Dolmen Wood

I kick-started this old-school adventure RPG based on 1st edition B/X (Old School Essentials) rules. I’m a big fan of the designer Gavin Norman, he does a lot of great writing and design that speaks to me in a rather unique way.

Dolmen Wood is essentially a self-contained RPG and campaign, based largely on fairy tale lore and old myths. As a kick-starter I already have the game in PDF form in my possession and the books will arrive later this year.

If you love Dungeons and Dragons from the 80, this is a nostalgic trip down memory lane, except that it’s designed to be extremely approachable, and episodic all wrapped up in a fleshed-out open world. It’s easily among the best RPG content I have ever read and I’m eagerly anticipating its arrival.

Arcs

Arcs is a 2024 release designed by Cole Wehrle who is quickly becoming one of the big stand-outs in the board gaming world. He is responsible for instant classics like Root, John Company, Oath and Pax Pamir.

He has a unique eye for Asymmetrical game design which is definitely in my wheelhouse, but more than that, I think he knows how to bring a theme to life.

This one combines trick-taking and the 4x genre, which I will admit is a strange combo, but it’s another thing that I love about Wehrle designs. They are always a bit off, but always in a good way. I’m hoping it is going to live up to the hype but given the reputation of this designer, I go into it with confidence.

The Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game

The Battle of Osgiliath is a really cool set that comes with lots of mini’s and terrain. While there are some more modern miniatures here for certain hero characters, most of the sculpts are really old and kind of crappy. They are not the GW quality you are probably used to if you are a modern miniature game fan.

I talked about this one briefly in a recent Hidden Gems article, but my hope is that this year, MESBG becomes something that I can expand on and sink my teeth into.

The claim to fame for MESBG is that it’s one the best rule sets GW has ever put out. I don’t know if that is really true or not, and honestly I don’t really care that much. It does seem to be the most common mantra among miniature-gaming fans which is great and all but as a Lord of the Rings fan, I just want to paint and play with some Middle Earth mini’s.

My issue with this game is that I came into it too late and right now as I paint up some of the miniatures of this game based on the Osgiliath box set, while I’m excited to get it to the table, I’m not really that impressed with the quality of the mini’s. This is an age thing, some of these sculpts are the better part of 10+ years old, but this is why now is a great time to get excited about this game.

In 2025 we can expect GW to be putting out new sculpts for this game and the obvious hope is that they go back and “refresh” the lines most key armies. I’m hoping we get new sculpts for the entire Fellowship and other key heroes/villains and I really hope we see new Orcs, Goblins, Rohan and Gondor troops. A lot of these old sculpts are really crappy by today’s standard and while I’m really excited, I don’t want to paint shitty miniatures. So here is hoping GW throttles up and gives us some new mini’s!

Board Game Reviews, Gaming Articles, On The Table

Big Board Gaming Weekend 2024

Every year like clockwork, my crew and I get together for a 4 day super weekend of nothing but BBQ, beer, and board gaming. We call it the “Hassela Weekend”, named after the sleepy little Swedish town where the event takes place. It is always the gaming highlight of every year and this, our 8th year of the event was no different.

Today we talk about all the games that were played, how they landed with everyone, and what I think. Enjoy the article!

Bang The Dice Game

Bang The Dice Game has been a Hassela tradition since 2019 when it was first introduced and has become a group favorite filler, usually played before or after dinner. This year the weekend kicked off with it and as always the game was played several times with the usual chaotic antics and gaming group chemistry that comes naturally for us.

It’s about the most basic hidden identity game around, you have effectively three factions (The Sherrif and his deputies, The Outlaws, and The Renegade(s). The makeup of who’s who depends on how many players you have, but this is a game where the more merrier. It’s more or less a simple guessing game where everyone wants to appear to be whatever they think will keep them safe, long enough to figure out who everyone else actually is. You roll some dice and shoot people and hope you kill the right person who is not on your team.

It’s fun, quick, and quite perfect as an entertaining way to spend a half hour while you nurse a beer. It’s not something you want to take seriously and I would argue it’s only barely a hidden identity game as the revelations/discovery is pretty quick. For more robust hidden identity games that focus more on the hidden identity theme and mechanics, I would probably recommend Coup or One Night Ultimate Werewolf. Still Bang The Dice Game lands well mainly because you don’t have to go through any weird opening phases like you do in One Night Ultimate Werewolf which can suck up a lot of time nor do you need to fully grasp the powers of the hidden identities like you do in Coup. Here hidden identities are clearly just teams and the discovery is mostly just about trying to figure out who is actually on your team. If you get it wrong you are likely to shoot the wrong person and that is the punchline of the hidden joke within the game.

It’s silly and very basic fun, it’s universally loved in our group.

Jabba’s Palace – Love Letter

Love Letter is a staple filler for any gaming collection and has been for a couple of years for us. It’s got a bit more strategy and “umpf” in my opinion than most fillers. This is one you’re going to really want to win as it’s very satisfying when you do. I’m not at all surprised that Love Letter makes so many “favorites” lists out there.

For all intents and purposes, Jabba’s Palace is a standard Love Letter with Star Wars art, a basic game of trying to keep track of what cards are played and using the special abilities of the card you play on your turn and the strength of the card you keep each round to ensure you are as protected as you can manage to outlast all of your opponents.

There is quite a bit of luck involved in successfully navigating any round of play, but over the course of several hands that make up a full game, usually, the most clever player will win, so it’s definitely not just luck of the draw here, there is a reasonable level of skill and strategy involved.

Love Letter is a perfect filler game, find a theme you like and there is a Love Letter version out there just for you. I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t like the game, it’s one of those card games that works with everyone, gamers and non-gamers alike.

Game of Thrones: The Board Game

Game of Thrones – The Board Game is another Hassela tradition in my gaming group going back all the way to the early years of the event. In fact, I would say for most of us the term “Hassela Weekend” is synonymous with a round of Game of Thrones The Board Game.

It’s a brutally tough game to win with a lot of strategy and politics at its core. It handles the Game of Thrones theme with perfection, with all of the amazing feints and double-crossing you would expect. There are so many trick plays, subtle chess moves with big pushes, and usually big finishes. In particular, if everyone at the table has a firm grasp of the game’s many subtleties. Our game this weekend was no different, it was a struggle all the way to the bitter end with huge ups and downs, massive upsets and ultimately being decided in a single final battle in the last round of the game. It’s exactly how you hope a Game of Thrones game will go down.

The game does have a few lumps that can be both frustrating and can at times spoil the fun. For one, this is a 6 player game, practically unplayable in my opinion with any other player count. I say that with my group having tried and tried on my occasions, it just doesn’t work. It’s 6 players or bust.

It’s also an absurdly long game, your mileage will vary but you can count on a roughly 5-6 hour game like money in the bank, and if you go the full 10 rounds, you may very well exceed 6+ hours.

It also has some very obvious “balancing” flaws that are very difficult to massage out. For one, Lannister’s position on the board, their starting conditions, and early game options are extremely poor and limited. I would say if you can win as the Lannisters in Game of Thrones the Board Game, you are either a freakish master of strategy or playing against incompetence because they stand very little of doing much more than being a fly to swat at worse to kingmakers at best.

You also have some issues like the Grey Joys which opposite to the Lannisters just have outstanding options and starting conditions as well as a stupidly strong character deck. They are beatable so I wouldn’t call them broken as I definitely would the Lannisters, but it’s going to be a group effort to keep them under control. Starks are also very strong and the Baratheons can quite literally win the game in two rounds if people aren’t very attentive and actively invading them from all sides from the very start. They are like a time clock that tests your knowledge of the game, if you don’t know what to do, THEY WILL win.

Some of these things are just nuances of the game and are part of the charm and challenge. I might make a few changes, via some house rules to help out the Lannisters, but warts and all this is a fantastic strategy game even though it’s very tough to get to the table and is definitely a “once in a long while” type of game at best. I would not want to play this game with any regularity but it’s always welcome at Hassela (as long as we have 6!)

Game of Thrones Trivia

When it comes to judging or even speaking about trivia games, my feeling is that they are basically all the same. It’s a game of questions and you try to answer them, you either like that sort of thing or you don’t. Trivia games with a theme like Game of Thrones, challenge your knowledge in a specific area, so if you are into a show, book, movie or whatever and you can find a trivia game on that topic it can be fun.

I’m a bit indifferent to this sort of thing, I mean, I like trivia well enough so I have no issue sitting around a table and trying to test my knowledge for a bit in particular on a subject I enjoy, but I don’t think this sort of thing falls into the realm of “boardgame” in the same sense of the word in which I normally would use it.

Still, this particular trivia game has an area control mechanic, the questions had multiple choice answers, and the difficulty, at least for my gaming crew who are all Game of Thrones fans was relatively easy. I think about 80% of the questions asked were answered correctly so the game played quickly, it was fun to reminisce about the show, and as a group of fans, it went over pretty well.

I don’t know that I have much more to say about it, trivia games are trivia games. They neither surprise nor disappoint, they just do what they do and you either like that sort of thing or you don’t, the specific version or topic of a trivia game isn’t going to change your mind.

Eclipse: Second Dawn For The Galaxy

Eclipse was number 6 on my all-time favorite games list from this year and I was excited to bring it to Hassela for a big 4x game event, showdown. This epic level 4x game is a cross-over game between classic Ameri-Trash war games and modern Euro’s which might seem like a strange combination but is actually the norm for most 4x games in general. Twilight Imperium of course immediately comes to mind which also had classic Euro game mechanics like role-selection and token-based action economy mixed in with rolling handfuls of dice.

Eclipse I always felt should be great at bringing a Twilight Imperium experience to the table in a much more reasonable amount of time with a lot less nuance, but more “core gameplay”. The mechanics of Eclipse are very efficient and streamlined, there is a very quick progression toward conflict and the hope is that you end up with games filled with big battles and tight final moments as players try to squeeze out as many points as they can out of every aspect of the 4x civilization building experience.

Unfortunately, our experience this weekend was considerably less exciting than that in my opinion, in fact I would say it brushed up against being boring.

I think part of the problem with Eclipse is that many of the games mechanics don’t play out like you hope or imagine they should. The game is about controlling space with spaceships, expanding your civilization, building technologies and upgrading your ships and it tries to encourage conflicts between players through generous victory point rewards for fighting. All the mechanics and the play loops are there to encourage exciting games, but typically what ends up happening is just a lot of turtling and build-up to a very anti-climatic end.

There is just no push and pull on the territory control part of the game and because your economy controls your action economy, very often once you have built some ships, did some research and some upgrades, you are out of steam. Since the game is a race to build up and there is a lot of pressure to “keep up”, you end up getting the build-up without the release.

There are 8 rounds in the game and with a 5-6 player game, it can and does still take 5-6 hours to complete, so in the end the main sales pitch “Twilight Imperium – Light” really is very marginal at best. You shave off a couple of hours, but I’m not sure the investment of time is well spent. I think I would much rather play a 7-8 hour game of Twilight Imperium than a 5-6 hour game of Eclipse and after this weekend’s play, I’m seriously questioning Eclipse’s position on my best-of list.

I think it’s a game with a lot of potential, but this last playthrough was disappointing, there just wasn’t any fire, and no memorable moments. It played like a stale and very uninspired cube pusher. It was a bit of a bummer because this was the game I think I was most excited to get to the table this year and ended up being the biggest disappointment of the weekend for me.

Red Rising

Red Rising was introduced to the crew at the event for the first time. It’s a relatively simple game of hand management and building combinations of cards to create a victory-scoring bonus at the end.

This was a tricky game because, in addition to the scoring points on the cards and the combo bonuses, you also had some secondary resources and tracks to manage which also scored points and were key to triggering the end game. It kind of made the game a race to build up your hand, but you had to keep up on the tracks because your hand was not going to be sufficient to win on its own.

One of the key features of the game is of course the setting and having read the first book (Red Rising), I had a connection to the game that not all the players shared, but as a whole, it was a very abstract card game that really focused on mechanics more then bringing the setting to the forefront. If you are looking to play a game in this Dystopian future, know that besides some familiar names and setting concepts like Hellium and The Institute, the representation here is pretty light.

There is a lot of timing and manipulation in the game that determines your decisions but the moves boil down to play a card and pick up a card from four different tracks. The “player choices” are fairly slim as is the impact of any single play. I would put this into the “light” game category, even though it takes about 45-60 minutes to play, it sort of felt like a fun little filler that went on a bit longer than most fillers would.

I thought it was a competent game mechanic but there really was no twist to the game, it kind of had limited energy that was mostly spent after the first play. I can’t see myself getting excited to have repeat plays of this one, though I would not object to either. It was a fine, middle-of-the-road card game. I will say, I thought the art style was great, it was very easy to learn and there was something very intuitive about how it played. It didn’t require anyone to explain the strategy of the game to me, it unfolded in front of you very quickly and obviously. There are many different routes to victory and I’m not sure I uncovered anything specifically that I could point to and say “do that and you can win”, but it was very clear which cards went with which cards and how you could combo them. The issue wasn’t understanding what cards you wanted into your hand, but manipulating the game to ensure that you got what you wanted.

Tapestry

Tapestry is one of those games that is difficult to define, you just know you like it and you want to play. In our gaming group, this one has shown up in the Hassela weekend lineup several times over the years and is one of the very few games that ever see’s repeat plays at the same event. We ended up playing it twice this year again.

I think if push comes to shove, the only thing I can say about it is, play it at least 3 times before you decide if you like it or not. It may seem strange but this is a game of subtlety and nuance, there is so much genius built into this very simple mechanic of moving cubes up a track. It’s absolutely fascinating to see the kind of growth and expansion you can create from such humble beginnings as the starting conditions of this game. 4 resources turn into a massive, sprawling empire!

There are no “big moves” in this game (usually). It’s a slow and methodical manipulation of resources to squeeze every last ounce of juice out of them. It’s a game about optimization of your actions and efficiency.

Frankly, it’s addictive, I play this game a lot on BoardGameArena and even though I have probably played it more than 30 times just this year, I still feel drawn to it.

To play it in person has its own charm because this is also one of the most beautiful games you could ever put on the table, the production quality is extreme. It’s Kickstarter magic and we are lucky that a member of our group is a super fan and has purchased all of the expansions.

If there is any drawback to the game is that experience = points. When you play with people who have taken the time to unravel the puzzle that is Tapestry, you can have very tight and competitive games, but new players, no matter how competent they are as gamers are going to struggle for quite a few games before they hit those 300-400 point scores that are pretty standard finishes for experienced players. I recall the first game I ever played of Tapestry I barely managed to score 60 points, these days I consider any score under 250 a complete failure. The road to experience is filled with brain-busting analysis and acquisition of micro experiences which for a gamer is basically “the juice” that keeps them coming back.

I love this game, I think it’s one of the finest examples of original and modern game design.

Dumber Than A Box Of Rocks

It’s a silly trivia game, we play it, we like it, and no one knows why. It’s the board game equivalent of a youtube video of a guy taking a golf ball to the balls, I don’t care who you are, that shit is funny and so is competing in a trivia game in which a literal rock can outsmart you.

Valor and Villany: Minions of Mordak

When we played this one, I was ready right then and there to call this “The Best of Hassela 2024”. It was so good.

When it comes to these “you get a character, let’s fight monsters” games, I’m usually not a fan and I have played a lot of them. The main logic is almost always the same for me…. Why are we playing this? Why not just play a role-playing game like D&D?

Valor & Villainy separates itself from the pack of “adventures fighting monsters” games in so many ways. I think its charm above all else is that it doesn’t take itself seriously, in fact, the game is, itself from the instruction book, to the spells, to the monsters, just a series of fantasy genre-driven gags that fit neatly into a well-executed combat mechanic. This is a game where you draw a loot card, read it and laugh, because whoever created that card, has clearly played a lot of D&D. They know the inside jokes and the silliness of the fantasy genre and just leans right into it.

Valor & Villainy is about as close as you can get to watching a comedy cartoon as a board game. Beyond silliness, however, you have very smooth mechanics with a ton of strategy and challenge. It doesn’t punish you for failure as so many of these games often do and so the game never pumps the breaks, it’s always full-force action sequences.

The combat mechanics in this game are perfectly tuned to the theme, the flow of the game is quick and the results are always fun. Right now if you asked me what the best fantasy adventure board game I have ever played was, even after a single play I would instantly point you to Valor and Villainy. It was just perfect.

The core premise of the game is simple, one player is the main villain and for the first 5-6 rounds, they are spreading “evil” in the land in the form of monsters and curses that the player characters, aka, the heroes have to deal with. The main purpose of these early encounters is the same for both the villains and the heroes. For the villain, it’s to try to kill the adventurers so the villain can gain power in preparation for the big fight and for the players it’s to kill monsters and find loot, for the same reason.

After a few rounds, the villain arrives on the battlefield and you have a big fight for the win. There are exploration mechanics, spell mechanics, and several distinctively different characters to choose from. Everything you want out of a fantasy adventure game.

So why is it not “The Best Game of Hassela 2024”? Well, the competition was pretty stiff, more on that later.

Suffice it to say if you love fantasy adventure board games, whip out the credit card, this one is worth every penny!

Condottiere

This 1995 classic filler shows up to the big Hassela weekend event every year like clockwork and this year was no different.

This trick-taking game with an area control element is all about trying to get the most out of your hand so that you can either win the battle, or exit it with sufficient strength to win the next one. You stretch your hand but you have to be careful about overcommitting because you might find yourself winning one hand, but then not even able to functionally participate in the next.

The decisions about which fights are important are driven by the area control mechanic which defines the lands you fight over and you need to pick your battles carefully. It’s not about winning every trick you can, it’s about winning the trick that matters.

It’s a straight shooter kind of a trick-taking game, no big bells and whistles, just play your cards right and know when to hold’em, know when to fold’em and know when to run.

Fun game, I think it’s a staple game that belongs in everyone’s collection.

Factory Funner

I’m a bit hesitant on this one, which is not to say I didn’t like it, in fact, I liked it quite a bit but…. there was something off about the sequence of the play that spoiled it a bit.

In Factory Funner you get some tiles that represent machines that produce things, requiring a couple of inputs of “fluid” of different colors and producing some kind of “fluid” output of different colors. As you lay out tiles and build connections between machines you score points for your efficiency. The fewer pipes and connectors you put down the more points you earn. It is effectively a puzzle game you have to solve on the fly without knowing what all of the pieces you will need to put down will be.

It’s a bit strange, but the factory building part and the stress of trying to make things fit and figuring out the puzzle was fantastic, I loved it right out of the gate. However, the method of how you get the tiles you are actually using has this live-action “grab it quickly or miss out” part, which sort of lacked fluidity and ended up kind of roughing up an otherwise good game.

I can see what they are going for here. You have to build a factory from a limited selection of tiles and you have to decide which tile you are going to take quickly to add extra stress to that key decision. I think that is fine, I actually like it, it reminds me a bit of Galaxy Truckers. I just don’t think they got the sequence of play right.

I would have preferred a drafting mechanic, or some sort of draw 3 tiles, you have 5 seconds to pick one, or some sort of turn-based thing. Anything but the “how fast can you grab the stuff you want before the other players do” thing which works fine in Galaxy Trucker but it’s because you have tons of tiles to pick from in Galaxy Trucker. Here you have as many tiles as there are players and you end up picking your own tiles most of the time just because you at least have some semblance of control that way.

I don’t know, for me the whole “grab a tile quickly” thing spoiled a pretty fascinating puzzle game of building factories. With this mechanic, I put it in the “ok” category without it, meaning the puzzly bit alone, I thought it was very good.

Hunt For The Ring

A hidden movement game based on the classic Lord Of The Rings story where Frodo (one of the players) and his companions make their way from The Shire to Rivendell while trying to avoid the pursuit of Nazgul represented by the rest of the players.

There are not very many hidden movement games out there and even fewer good ones. I’m reminded of another game on my shelf collecting dust with a similar premise called Fury of Dracula which I used to favor but have found over the years is just a bit overcooked in certain places.

Hunt For The Ring succeeds where Fury of Dracula fails in that they really focus on the “searching for them” part of the game and don’t try to overcomplicate the “finding them part”. In Fury of Dracula when you finally locate Dracula you have to fight him using one of the most convoluted combat mechanics I have ever seen put into a game. The result is this weird anti-climatic ending to this great first part of the game where you play hide and go seek with a pointlessly complex combat mechanic to resolve the winner of the game.

Hunt For The Ring keeps that “we found him” part of the game simple using a familiar corruption mechanic from War of The Ring (a game made by the same designer). The result is very satisfying and Hunt For The Ring ended up being one of the highlights of the Hassela weekend as a result for me.

They nailed the hide-and-go-seek part of the game, they did a great job keeping the rules simple and interruption shinanigans to a minimum. It’s a straightforward game of trying to find and trap the fellowship.

I like this one, I would happily play it again. The great thing about hidden movement games like Hunt For The Ring is that they are generally very simple, Hunt For The Ring did have some complexity to it but most of it was there to serve the hide-and-go-seek game which is exactly where the focus should be in a game like this.

A+ from me on this one.

Hegemony

Last but certainly not least is Hegemony, the game I would put as the firm winner of the 4-day weekend and even a contender for my pick for game of the year.

Holy shit my mind was blown by this one. I don’t even know exactly how to put it into words, but this was without question one of the most unique games I have played in a long time. It’s fair to say the game is pretty complex, in fact, I know we did several important things incorrectly on our first playthrough, but even with that, it was abundantly clear that this game was going to be hitting the table in the future. There is a lot of juice to explore here and right now, I’m completely fascinated by the possibilities.

Essentially the game is about navigating the very real feeling issues of social economics from the perspective of one of the four asymmetrical classes (factions in the game) of society (Working Class, Middle Class, Capitalists, and The State). A concept so thematically executed in these mechanics, that it’s almost uncomfortable.

In the game each player has to navigate their social class to success by scoring victory points related to the class’s core function in society. The catch is that the requirements for success aren’t always crystal clear in the sense that there are many combined causes and effects that are not always in your control or fully predictable. The game has a lot of complex interactions in which you are trying to adjust society to serve you, while making sure your competitors are also served, because they are ultimately responsible for serving you in many regards as well (their success is often your success), even though by serving you they are also screwing you most of the time. I don’t know if that makes sense, it shouldn’t, but it’s how it works and the weirdest thing about it is that you end up feeling both the connection to the real world and a sense of compassion for the class you’re representing whether you agree with the abstracted political implications or not.

There is a kind of rhythm to the game that feels very personal in a way. You are hitched up to a mode of thinking depending on your faction and there are basic instincts and an almost belligerent-like execution of actions sometimes where you forget that you’re playing a game and your brain gets wrapped up in the abstracted politics of the fictitious world your playing in. Emotions can run quite high.

For example, the tax rate, a critical policy in the game has a wide sweeping impact on everyone, but there are both benefits and consequences for having a high or a low tax rate for everyone. Meaning it’s never exclusively good or bad. Make the tax rate too high and suddenly businesses start shutting down and creating unemployment, make the tax rate too low and the state might fail resulting in massive penalties for everyone including wage reductions, tax hikes, and potentially mass unemployment.

There are various policies like this each with their own very global impact, but managing these isn’t the only social issue to contend with. The economics of an always-growing population create all manner of issues for everyone and the working class in particular has a core reliance on everyone else’s ability to manage their faction. More to the point, if players fail to manage the society well enough the working class can create stiff consequences which include strikes and demonstrations that can cost everyone both production, money, and victory points.

As such there is a need to cooperate to a certain degree even between the most obvious competitors like the working class and the capitalists, but how do you cooperate with someone who wants the exact opposite thing as you do and neither side can win the game if the other gets what they want.

The whole game falls firmly into the “impossible to resolve” category and so the trick to the whole thing becomes one of maneuvering and clever and well-timed strategic moves in an attempt to simply out-pace everyone else on the victory point track as society is catapulted towards inevitable disaster. Failure in a word is imminent, but from the ashes, one of these classes will emerge to claim victory.

A big part of the game that sort of “breaks the rules” is in the action cards each player has, which are also asymmetrical decks unique for each class. These cards allow you to do things the basic actions don’t and it’s in the smart use of these cards that most players will find their victory. As a general rule, each time you are forced to take a basic action instead of leveraging the effects of a card, it is a step towards defeat as it’s only through the use of these cards you can get ahead. Basic actions are a recovery or corrective measure, not a plan. Playing these cards however, is tricky because you have to create just the right conditions in most cases to really get the most out of them. If you are constantly forced to take corrective measures by discarding cards for basic actions rather than focusing on the execution of a plan that involves the effects of your cards, your chances of success dwindle in the very esoteric and hard-to-see math behind how victory point acquisition works.

There is a natural rhythm to the game that creates inevitable hostility. Basically in a status-quo environment in which everyone cooperates and the game simply plays out at a “medium” give and take, the state is the automatic winner, this is by design as the state essentially wants to keep everyone at an even keel. No one can keep up on points with the state if they are simply collecting medium salaries, paying medium prices for goods, at a medium tax rate with the population growing at a medium level. For each class, there has to be some major advantage in the policies in their favor for them to get an edge in the victory point acrobatics.

Each class has its Achilles heel sort of speak, a single policy that when it’s in their favor to an extreme will guarantee that they will continually outscore everyone else during the scoring round. Manipulating circumstances to get that in place is difficult, usually unlikely as long as all the players are aware of the impact, but inevitably there are short-term gains to be had sometimes by siding with someone to give them what they want.

For example, having a low tax rate can help the working class to expand a little quicker and have some reserve cash so that they can react a little better to a constantly changing game state, but low tax causes problems for the state and the reserves of affordable resources dries up opening an opportunity for the capitalist to capitalize on a starving market. The result is a working class that goes plus-minus, a failed state while the capitalist and middle class score obscene amounts of points.

Often you have to make unfavorable decisions to keep a particular class from failing outright because each class has a failsafe response that screws everyone when they are pushed too hard. The working class can demonstrate and protest shutting down production, the state can fail and do a hard reset causing high taxation and the capitalists and middle class can sell off companies and cut deeply into everyone’s bottom line sending them to the unemployment line. The results are always pretty devastating to everyone when any class fails to remain stable and most often the person least affected is the person’s faction that failed, which is key to the balance of the game. It forces others to worry about your success to some extent. You don’t want to be too helpful, but you also don’t want to outright crush anyone either.

There is so much more to say about this game and its many nuances if you can imagine that all the above is from a single play of the game.

If there is a negative to Hegemony, it’s that the rules are quite intricate and it’s very easy to get them wrong and when you do, even if it’s just a small rule, it has a huge impact. For example in our first play-through, we did the check IMF test after paying taxes, but you actually do the IMF check first and the taxes second. This completely changes the game, yet there is only one line in the entire rulebook that mentions it despite it being a very critical rule. The rulebook however is well written and the cheat sheets that come with the game are very helpful, so once you learn to play the game properly, that initial difficulty of the game which coincidently adds a lot to the length, goes away. Our first game took the better part of 7 hours, but I’m 100% certain we will cut that time in half quite easily for our next playthrough.

Hands one of the best games I have played this year!

Conclusion

All I can ever say about our Hassela weekends each year is that it’s the gaming highlight of the year for me. A fantastic weekend of pure and uninterrupted fun time in the company of the best group of guys I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. It is pure bliss!

Every year I hope that when I return from the weekend I have made a new discovery and most years that ends up being true. This year Hegemony blew the doors off, but I think a big nod of approval has to go out to both Hunt For The Ring and Valor and Villany, two absolute gems.

Can’t wait for next year!

Best of List, Board Game Reviews

Top 10 Gaming Experiences Of 2023

2024 was a great year for gaming for me, but as I started this list originally set to be the best games fo 2023 I realized that a lot of the games that I played weren’t technically games released in 2023. Hence, this year, the list is more about my top 10 gaming experiences rather than the top 10 games of 2023.

I did however create a small section at the end of the article talking about some 2023 releases that I thought where worthy of note.

Ok enough foreplay, let’s get into it!

10. Eclipse: Second Dawn For The Galaxy

I picked up the 2nd edition of Eclipse on a whim, not so much because I felt the 1st edition was so great, quite to the contrary, but because there was so much positive word on this follow-up that I had to try it.

I’m glad I did, 2nd edition Eclipse is a great game, a vast improvement over 1st edition and it hits a sweet spot in the area of science-fiction-based galactic civilization games with an epic feel.

I think to understand what I mean about sweet spot you have to understand that I love my Twilight Imperium when it comes to this genre, it’s my go-to game for science-fiction civilization-building games. This comes with a BIG but, as it is a six to eight-hour game that is pretty difficult to get to the table with a structure that doesn’t exactly speak to my and many other gaming crews universally. In fact in my group we so very rarely play Twilight Imperium at this point, it’s collecting a lot of dust, to such a degree that were it not among my favorite board games of all time I might consider cutting it from my collection.

Twilight Imperium 4th edition without any question in my mind is a much better game than Eclipse, but it’s such a massive all-day event that it is difficult to get to the table. Case in point, it was not played in 2023 at all!

Eclipse 2nd edition on the other hand hits a lot of the same highlights as a game for me but it does it in under 4 hours, or less even if you have a group that knows the rules well.

More than that it’s a game that gets right to the meat of the action from turn 1, there isn’t a whole lot of posturing and political pre-gaming in the game like there is in Twilight Imperium, which means it’s a lot more of a game than an experience. TI4 is very much an event-focused gaming experience but Eclipse manages to be a board game you really can just pull out and play like any other. This puts it in a unique position in my collection.

I still don’t think it’s anywhere close to as good a game as Twilight Imperium is, to me TI4 remains the king of science-fiction-based galactic conquests and civilization-building games, but Eclipse is much easier to get to the table and it is a very fun gaming experience.

For fans of the genre, I think this discussion is well-known and common. Suffice it to say if you’re a fan of Civ-Builders, this is one of the best ones around as it finds that all-important middle ground that allows it to hit the table without a lot of fuss.

9. Viticulture

Strangely enough, this game was on my shelf in shrink wrap for the better part of 3 years before I got it to the table. This year I finally managed to pull it out, learn how to play and get it to the table.

I was very pleasantly surprised by this one. This is a very solid worker placement game with a lot of variation both in strategy (ways to win) and calculation of moves (planning ahead). The game rules were really clear so even when learning to play on the first pass, you are immediately deep-diving into the possibilities, there was no major learning curve. Almost as if all previous experiences with other worker placement games apply and you’re just playing kind of a different take on the same core principles common in all of these types of games.

That said, it wasn’t boring. There are a lot of really clever combinations, it was a very tight game rather than your typical super point structure where one guy has 200 VP’s at the end of the game and another 350. Everyone in our games was in the running with the winner edging out by 2-3 points typically. The game is available on boardgamearena.com which is a great bonus.

Very competitive and interesting game, didn’t overstay its welcome, in fact, it felt kind of short which adds to the pressure of scoring points as soon as possible as much as possible as you could as you can see way in advance that the game would end in a few turns.

Just a good solid, worker placement game well worth getting with plenty of replayability. Great stuff, highly recommended.

8. Sekigahara: The Unification Of Japan

This one was on my must-try list for a very long time, several years at least. I had heard so many good things about it and it checks all my boxes as I love anything based on Medieval Japan, I love war games, I love two-player games, I love card-driven games and I have for so long wanted to try a block game. I was very excited when the game was finally reprinted and became available and snagged it up.

Sekigahara is a part strategy but mostly a tactical game about positioning and outthinking your opponent with a lot of timing-based master planning built into it. It isn’t just about getting your armies in place, but it’s about making sure you have the right cards, at the right time for the right battle.

It’s one of those games where you need to have a plan for the hand of cards you are dealt and the right strategy for the unit position. It’s not enough to have one or the other, this game is all about timing things perfectly.

The game moves at a neck-breaking pace, which is awesome for a war game as you can sit down and play two or three matches back to back. I would say each game lasts at the most two hours and if you have two players that know the rules, you can finish a match in under an hour.

It has a static start, but the dynamics of the game create a lot of variability as so much of the game is focused on the cards in your hand. There is a kind of veteran learning element to the game, if you know the deck and you know the map you are going to have a big advantage over a novice but by the same token, the learning curve is quite short so it doesn’t take long for you to get to a point where you are dissecting the games core properties.

I would not recommend this game to all gamers universally, I think it’s important that you enjoy competitive war games and have a healthy love for card games, as this game does not apologize for being kind of a straight-to-it card-based war game. It’s that, if that is not your thing, this game does not offer or cater to other aspects of board gaming, if it is, this game is right up your alley.

Definitely one of my favorite new additions to my collection in 2023.

7. Vampire: Prince Of The City

This is a bit of a strange one, as it is a game released back in 2006 and it was a completely random unprompted purchase by a member of my gaming crew which made its debut at our yearly big board gaming weekend.

My gaming crew loves all things Vampire The Masquerade, originally a role-playing game made by a company back in the 90’s called White Wolf. The world of darkness is the setting in which Vampires live and these days there are quite a few new games that have come out for this universe including Vampire: The Masquerade Heritage which came out in 2020, Vampire: The Masquerade Chapters (2023) and Vampire: The Masquerade – Vendetta (2020) just to name a few. All great, modern games, but Vampire: Prince of the City is an older model.

Vampire Vendetta, another game in the world of darkness is a much faster and more mechanically driven take on a similar concept. To date, this remains one of my favorite Vampire The Masquerade-based games.

Vampire: Prince Of The City is a game about controlling a modern-day city from behind the scenes through the manipulation of politics and economics. Vampires don’t play by the rules of course, they indoctrinate their pawns using supernatural methods.

In the game you represent an elder vampire that uses influence to take control of areas on a map and the only other competitors are other elder vampires (other players). Players collect “assets” that help them to do this more efficiently of course, which can range from collecting people, equipment or unique strategy cards.

The game is quite long and has quite a bit of diplomacy between players in which they plot against each other, sometimes working together and sometimes betraying each other. The goal of the game is to come out on top, but the game is structured in a way where if two players decide to gang up on you, things are going to become difficult if not impossible. The driving force is of course that when two players work together, often one of them comes out of it better than the other, leading to the inevitable betrayal and restructuring of alliances.

These politics which remind me a lot of the classic game of Diplomacy, are really what pushes the game forward far more than actual mechanical actions players take which is a style of play that is really right in my gaming crews wheelhouse.

The point is that this is not a game you win on mechanics, it’s a game you win through political and diplomatic manipulation between the players, in a lot of ways, its a game of psychology.

This is a very long game and this is probably the only black mark against it and notably one of the key complaints from most reviewers. Its an event-style game but I would say if you are into games that cause heated debates and player-to-player diplomacy, this one brings that sort of playstyle to the table in spades.

Fantastic game in my humble opinion, with a great theme, but not for the faint of heart. This is a bit of a pig that is going to take some time to get done, but so well worth it in my opinion. Exactly the sort of vampire-focused experience that represents the world of darkness setting on which it’s based.

6. Spirit Island

I say this all the time, I’m not a huge fan of cooperative games typically, except when I am and then I love them. A great example is Lord of the Rings LCG, it’s one of my most played and beloved games that I have collected like a total fanatic.

Spirit Island is warming up to be another exception for me. I have only played a couple of times, but this game is just so well designed, so tight, so difficult, and handles the cooperative element so well.

My biggest problem with cooperative games is that when I play, I often feel like I don’t need the other players to win and/or I need the players to do very specific things under my instruction in order to win, so when they take unoptimized actions that cause us to lose (even when I know better) it annoys me. This covers most cooperative games and it’s why generally, I do not enjoy them.

Spirit Island is different because it is far too complex and has far too many moving parts, not to mention unknowns like other player’s cards to a point where micro-managing each other as players is impossible. You just have to rely on each player to handle their own business and leverage their own strategy and ask for help when they need it.

This means that each player has to create and execute their own approach to the game which is supported by the fact that each spirit in the game is asymmetrical. Everyone must be generally aware of high-level events and be ready to assist others who run into trouble why dealing with the problems on their side of the board.

This setup is quite fantastic in particular in the scope of the game’s very high level of difficulty and increably diverse dynamics. There is so much going on in this game, so many different strategies thanks in large part to the huge diversity of “spirits” players can select. Each spirit has its play style, its special powers and power cards.

It’s a really deep and very long game, a gamer’s game essentially, definitely not for the dabbler. There is a big learning curve both to learn how to play and how to play well. There is also a lot of levels of difficulty so you’re never going to find a way to “beat” the game, its replayability is effectively unlimited.

Fantastic game in my book, definitely deserving of all the awards and praise it has received over the last couple of years since its release. Highly recommended, but only for the truly fanatically hardcore and highly dedicated gamers, this is not something you pull out on family board game night.

5. Lord Of The Rings LCG

My all-time favorite solo and cooperative game.

Like almost every year since I started collecting, Lord of the Rings the LCG has been a central part of my weekly gaming routine. It’s a rare week that I don’t pick up a game or two of LotR LCG, it has been and continues to be one of my favorite games to pull out.

Now I normally play this cooperative game solo, but this year I managed to get a few multiplayer games going and like me, my gaming crew enjoys this one as well. Of course, the big fun of this game is getting super into it, building your own decks, creating your own solutions to the countless quests that have been released for this game as well as doing the big campaign. Not everyone gets into the game on that level and frankly, as a dabble it’s okay, but this is a game for fanatics who are ready to do serious deck building and that means collecting. Still, it’s a lot of fun to play on any level and pretty easy to do as this game has a pretty low learning curve.

I have talked about this game so many times on this site, I don’t see any reason to say more, just have a browse, there are plenty of articles about this one. I love it and true love lasts forever!

4. Caesar: Rome vs. Gaul

The card-driven influence control genre which at this point has become quite broad is one of my favorite in board gaming. This includes games like Washingtons War, Twilight Struggle and Imperial Struggle just to name a few.

I have introduced this particular one to several people this year, members of my gaming crew as well as my brother-in-law who is a bit of a board gaming dabbler.

Each time this one comes out, it gets solid reviews across the board from everyone which is more than I can say for all other influence control games that tend to be a bit more niche. Not to say that this is the best of the bunch, in my opinion, it’s not, that honor falls to Imperial Struggle. What I find to be the core reason this one tends to do better is that in Rome vs. Gaul thanks to its dichotomous sides, one being (Rome) far more difficult to play and succeed at and one (Gaul) being much simpler, it works great for introductions.

The end result is that the first-time experience is fun for both players (experienced and novice) and creates a great competitive game. This tends not to be true about most influence control games that have many specialized strategies. Typically when teaching someone something like Twilight Struggle, as an experienced player you are going to crush your opponent the first 5-10 games before they catch on.

That however I don’t think is the only thing that separates Rome Vs. Gaul. I think it has a cool historical theme, looks amazing on the table and has very clear winning conditions that are easy to grasp without a heavy chrome layer of exceptions. It’s just a very intuitive design, a great competitive take on the card-driven influence control genre.

Its main flaw is that once both players become experienced with the game you will find that winning as the Rome player becomes exceedingly difficult, there are just too many almost impossible-to-overcome Gaul strategies so the game tends to be a bit unbalanced when two players of equal skill are playing the game. I find the game needs some house rules to correct this.

That doesn’t change my opinion about it as I find most of the time when I pull it out I’m dealing with a new or less experienced player and this game is great for that purpose.

Highly recommend this one if you are a fan of CDG influence control games like Twilight Struggle and Washington’s War in particular.

3. Great Western Trail

I play a lot of Great Western Trail, mainly because it’s available on Boardgamearena.com. As of this writing, I have played 110 games with 35 victories. That is a lot of Great Western Trail and most of that I did last year which means I was averaging several games a week.

I think a big part of the reason I like Great Western Trail is that each time you play you must be adaptive. There is no winning formula, the circumstances of each game are different and what your opponents are doing matters a lot in this game which is not always, in fact, rarely the case in Euro games like this. This is a game where after 110 games, I can still get completely crushed because of circumstances and risky moves that did not pay off. It’s really what I love about the game, it remains a challenge to win no matter how much I play it.

The interaction between players in Great Western Trail is subtle but profound and I think it does a great job of being simultaneously easy to learn but deep strategically. I think its one of the most unique and intriguing Euro games that has come out this side of the decade.

It’s without a doubt my current favorite, chill back and play game and I find every time I go to boardgameareana.com for a fix, this is the one I reach for. I own the hardcopy as well and every time I pull it out with my friends or family it lands well.

Just a really good all-around board game for all occasions. It’s my go-to Euro game.

2. War Room

The truth is that my gaming group and I play War Room once per year on my birthday since I got it a few years back. It’s become something of a tradition at this point but this one never disappoints. I can remember the details of every game of War Room I have played and it’s always a great time.

This is not a particularly deep game, it is, for the most part, a bit more complex version of RISK or Axis and Allies and while I know some people take it quite seriously as a war game, for me, this is just a good time in a box. For my gaming group it’s more of a fun party game where we play war for the day, roll some dice and come up with new inside jokes that will play out for the rest of the year.

I do love War Room as a game though, I do think it’s a fun strategic puzzle and there are plenty of great/difficult decisions to make and you can in fact get pretty serious with it. Given how long and huge it is, this is not a game you just spring on a group, so I can understand why many group give it this serious treatment. This is an event where you have to arrange food, snacks, and drinks and make a whole thing out of it, because 12 hours is about the average play time. It’s essentially a kind of party war game to me.

I love it, it’s been my favorite board game of all time since I discovered it and I think that will remain to be true for a long time.

1. Empire Of The Sun

Empire of the Sun is a very complex game and is not recommended for the uninitiated.

There is no question that all my really serious and competitive gaming in 2023 was done with Empire Of The Sun. I have completely abandoned any hope of ever getting this one to the table with my local gaming group, it’s just too big of a commitment for them and it’s too niche so this year I went online to search for opponents.

I found plenty and ever since I have had several active games going online over vassal of Empire of the Sun and it has become an absolute obsession for me. This highly complex game with a massive learning curve only works when you have two players completely dedicated to not only learning how to play but enforcing those rules with impunity.

I found exactly such opponents and I have been overthinking this one for the entire year and it’s been an amazing experience.

While War Room is my favorite game of all time, Empire of the Sun is the best game design I have ever run across. Mark Herman is a genius in my book and I have said it before, but this is the Mona Lisa of his career.

In Empire of the Sun you execute World War II in the Pacific Theatre as either Japan or the Allies in extreme detail on an operational level. It boasts an intimidating 50 page rulebook with a ridiculous amount of chrome for what I can only describe to be one of the best simulations you will ever experience.

I do not recommend this to anyone except the most dedicated fan of war games. This is not something you dabble or “learn to play”, this is the equivalent of studying chess as a hobby. You will spend hundreds of hours studying every unit, every detail of the map, and every rule that governs the game and creates endless strategies for you to test. It’s exhilarating if you are into that sort of thing, it’s a complete nightmare of a board game if you are not.

I love it with a deep passion.

2023 releases worth a mention

I’m not the sort of gamer that chases the cult of the new anymore and I find that my gaming selections are more based on what I already love than chasing the dragon. That said there were a few interesting games that came out this year and I think they deserve some mentioning for better or worse.

Hegemony: Lead Your Class To Victory

This one is gaining a lot of momentum in the gaming community, slowly climbing the boardgamegeek ladder and for good reason. Without question one of the most interesting designs on an unusual subject. It’s an asymmetrical game where players work together to develop a functioning society represented by each player acting as a part of the government or social order. Based on politics and economics, this is a game about governing, a combination of cooperation and competition. It made my must-buy list in 2023.

Star Wars: The Deckbuilding Game

I know, we need another deckbuilding game like we need a hole in our head, but ever since Star Wars Destiny tragically ended, finding a replacement for it has been something of a desire I suppose. There are a few games actually in the works, but this one made its debut in 2023 and it certainly looks to be the frontrunner.

Great art, simple mechanics with a straight to it approach in the competitive dueling space.

Deck building games of course require the game to have longevity, which is the most difficult element to asses at the start of a games run. Star Wars Destiny for example started out on fire in terms of popularity, but petered out quite quickly and didn’t survive its adolescence. A common problem in the collectable card game space, a fate that may very well be in this games future.

That said, I’m always hopeful and this one certainly has my attention.