I get a lot of questions from readers. Some are wild, some are insightful, and some are just thinly veiled excuses to argue about dice rolls. But none show up in my inbox more often than this one:
“Which is better, Star Wars: Destiny or Star Wars: Unlimited?”
Honestly, it’s such a common question that I feel like Obi-Wan being asked for the millionth time if the Force can help you win at sabacc. So fine. Today, we settle this. Lightsabers down, cards up, let’s talk Destiny vs. Unlimited.
Now, if we’re going strictly by canon, this fight is already over. Destiny was discontinued back in January 2020 with its swan song set, Covert Missions. Unlimited, on the other hand, is still very much alive, kicking, and racking up wins like a young Luke Skywalker.
I was sad to see Destiny get discontinued, but I was not terribly surprised by it. The game had a lot of business issues related to supply, and it was way too expensive.
But here’s the thing: every CCG veteran knows that just because something is “out of print” doesn’t mean it’s “out of the fight.” If history has taught us anything (besides never betting against Han in a tight spot), it’s that the old guard sometimes outshines the flashy new kid on the block.
Case in point: Legend of the Five Rings. The AEG original ran for a glorious twenty years, shaping stories, tournaments, and countless arguments about clan honor. The Fantasy Flight reboot barely limped to four years before being retired. By any metric, the classic run was the true Shogun of Rokugan.
Legend of the Five Rings was a complex and deep CCG with a dedicated following, an awesome community, and a very long history. I loved this game; one of my biggest regrets in life was selling off my collection many moons ago. What a fool I am!
But I digress. We’re not here to talk samurai, we’re here for blasters and dice. So let’s buckle in and jump to lightspeed: it’s Destiny vs. Unlimited, once and for all.
What Makes A CCG “good”
Before we can really pit these two games against each other, let’s get our bearings and talk about what actually makes a good CCG. I mean, sure, flashy art and cool tokens are nice, but if that’s all it took, every holochess set on the Millennium Falcon would be tournament-ready. In my book, there are three pillars that matter most.
First: the mechanics have to be balanced. No single meta should be the Death Star of the game, capable of blowing up entire tournaments just by existing. Winning and losing needs to happen on the battlefield (or playmat), not in the deckbuilding phase where whoever owns the shiniest, rarest card automatically wins.
Second: theme matters, a lot. Especially when we’re talking about a galaxy far, far away. If Jar Jar Binks somehow outmuscles Darth Vader in combat, then we’ve veered straight into “special edition” nonsense. A good CCG should feel like the universe it’s set in, so that both fans and players are immersed in the same story.
Third, and maybe most important: publisher support. Sets need to release on a steady cadence, playtesting has to be tighter than a stormtrooper’s helmet, and the collectible element has to actually feel… collectible. Publishers can’t be afraid to step in with bans, errata, or even mid-course corrections when something breaks the game. And when they do mess up (because they will mess up), they’ve got to fix it faster than the Millennium Falcon making the Kessel Run.
Now, sure, there are other things that make a great CCG, but without these three, the whole enterprise collapses. Get these wrong, and no amount of flashy marketing or movie tie-ins will save you.
Alright, let’s talk Destiny for a minute.
Back in April 2018, I wrote a review for Star Wars Destiny where I boldly proclaimed:
“The robust nature of CCGs combined with FFG’s commitment to the product means this game likely has a long and bright future ahead of it.”
Yeah… about that. Let’s just say that prediction aged about as well as Anakin’s relationship with sand.
The truth is, Destiny never really hit hyperspace on any of the three pillars that make a CCG thrive.
Balance – The game looked balanced at first, but cracks started showing up after the first set. These balance issues piled up, whole metas dominated by a handful of characters or combos by the 3rd set. By the end, they would have had to ban entire card types to straighten out the game. It was quite broken in the end.
Theme – They nailed the Star Wars feel, no argument there. Rolling those chunky dice and throwing Darth Vader into the fray felt amazing. But mechanically, a lot of cards just did variations of the same thing, and after the initial hype, the design space started to feel cramped. It was like being promised a galaxy of possibilities and then realizing most of the planets were just Tatooine with a different filter. By the 3rd set, you had dozens of cards that all did things so similar they were practically the same card, and the costs of cards could vary drastically, and rarely did any of it make thematic sense.
Publisher support – FFG wanted to back Destiny; you could sense that they thought they had a big winner on their hands, but the Force wasn’t with them on logistics. Supply shortages, constant delays, and radio silence for excessively long periods meant the community spent more hours speculating on forums than actually playing. By the time new sets arrived, the hype had often fizzled.
Here’s the thing: when Awakenings dropped, Destiny felt incredible. It had that fresh, lightsaber-sharp energy, and it was easy to see why so many of us believed it had a long future. But by the second and third sets, the cracks had become death-star-sized.
The final set of Destiny illustrates one of the key problems of the game: an inflexible design space. They ran out of ideas way too soon, and the games different sets became quite indistinguishable from each other. For the most part, they started to feel very repetitive.
And just to twist the vibroblade a little deeper, Destiny was stupidly expensive. Even by CCG standards, it was pretty ridiculous with a tough entry point for new players. If you wanted to be competitive, your wallet felt it. Big time.
Don’t get me wrong: I still love Destiny despite it all. I’ll happily crack it out for a casual game, and it’ll always have a special spot in my collection. It really is a one of a kind, a true diamond with rough edges.
As a long-term product, I don’t think there was much hope. This game pulled a Boba Fett, awesome in its debut, but swallowed by the Sarlacc pit way too soon.
Star Wars Unlimited
Star Wars: Unlimited landed in March 2024 with all the pomp and circumstance of a new Imperial Star Destroyer sliding out of drydock. The hype was real, the launch was smooth, and yes, it came from the same publisher that once gave us Destiny. Déjà vu, anyone?
But here’s the difference: Unlimited actually nailed the three pillars of CCG success. No gimmicky dice, no fiddly side mechanics, just a straight-up, classic collectible card game. FFG followed a tried-and-true model like they had a copy of The Jedi Path propped open on the table.
The result is a well-balanced, well-supported game that wears the Star Wars theme like a perfectly tailored robe. Every detail feels polished, every release has hit its mark, and the game hums along with the confidence of a Jedi Master. By all practical measures, Unlimited is CCG perfection.
Star Wars Unlimited knows its audience. If you are going to launch a starter set for a Star Wars Game, your opening play is a duel between the two most famous characters in the setting. This was a fantastic starter set, even if you don’t plan to collect Unlimited, its worth getting. It’s that good!
And yet… here’s where the holocron cracks. For all its precision, Unlimited doesn’t really have that wild spark of uniqueness that sets it apart in any way. There are no dice rolling across the table, no risky design choices, no “wow” factor that makes you stop and say, THIS is what makes this game special. Instead, it feels like Magic: The Gathering, just dressed in Star Wars robes.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fantastic design. I enjoy it, I collect it, and I’ll happily sit down for a game when the opportunity arises. But I don’t wake up at night plotting new deck builds like I did with Destiny or find myself agonizing over deck-building problems like in Lord of the Rings LCG. Unlimited is a reliable, polished, and thoroughly fun game, but it doesn’t break the mold in any way; in fact, it’s using the most traditional CCG mold there is.
Destinity vs. Unlimited
Alright, the cards are on the table, the dice have been rolled, and the time has come to declare a winner.
And the winner is… Star Wars: Destiny!
Now, hear me out. The logic is simple: if I’m reaching for a game right now, between these two, Destiny is the one I grab.
It’s flawed, no one’s denying that. But it’s also unique, risky, and downright fun. Destiny brought something to the table that no other CCG did: dice. Rolling those chunky, shiny dice, seeing what the Force decides… it’s unpredictable, it’s exciting, and it’s exactly the kind of chaos a Star Wars game should embrace.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Unlimited. It’s polished, dependable, and a joy to play. This isn’t a duel to the death between two CCGs, I’ve got at least a dozen on my shelf, and there’s room in this galaxy for all of them.
When I reach for a CCG, I want something special. Something that separates it from the cookie-cutter card games that populate the universe. Destiny has that spark, Unlimited I don’t thing does. There have been plenty of games like Unlimited, but there’s never been anything like Star Wars Destiny before, and there hasn’t been anything like it since. One of a kind. Risky. A little chaotic. That’s why, in my book, Destiny still rules the galaxy.
Shatterpoint, in my experience, is one of those games I orbit like a curious satellite, drawn in by proximity to someone who collects it, intrigued enough to play from time to time, but still waiting for that Force-tinged spark to pull me fully into the gravity well. I’ve danced around the edge of commitment more times than I can count. I’ve even had Shatterpoint boxes in my cart at Alphaspel.se, but each time, I’ve backed out at the final checkout like Admiral Akbar sensing a trap.
Don’t get me wrong: the miniatures are phenomenal, arguably the finest Star Wars sculpts on the market. The scale is just right, and it hits that sweet spot of the galaxy far, far away: up-close and personal lightsaber clashes, blaster duels, and cinematic showdowns between iconic characters. It’s Star Wars at its most visceral. And Shatterpoint nails that vibe.
And yet… I hesitate.
This isn’t the only game that puts me in this strange force dyad of admiration and ambivalence. Take Marvel: Crisis Protocol, I love the Marvel universe, truly, and Crisis Protocol delivers some of the most stunning superhero miniatures I’ve ever seen, wrapped in a concept that practically screams “perfect game night.” Super squads brawling across a cityscape? That’s pure comic book gold. And still, I find myself asking the same uncomfortable question.
I love all things Marvel, I feel literal pain that I don’t own these miniatures, but for me, a miniature game has to be more than just nice miniatures. Collection and gameplay have to be inseparable partners that live side by side as equals.
Are these actually good games?
In today’s In Theory article, we’re zeroing in on Star Wars: Shatterpoint. I want to break down why I think it might be a great game… and also why I suspect it might not be. Let’s get into it!
Star Wars: Shatterpoint as a premise
When Star Wars: Shatterpoint was first announced, it landed at a time when the Star Wars tabletop scene was, let’s be honest, already more crowded than the Mos Eisley cantina on a Saturday night. I’d spent years navigating asteroid fields with X-Wing, commanding fleets in Armada, and my Legion core box was still sitting half-painted like a forgotten protocol droid in a junkyard. And don’t even get me started on Star Wars: Destiny, that game was my cardboard crack, I was blowing money on it like I won the lottery. It was just… a lot. Too much Star Wars plastic, too many dice, too many rules bouncing around my head.
So when Shatterpoint came along, I made a decision, a prequel-style “this is how democracy dies” kind of decision, to skip it. Not because I thought it looked bad, but because I had officially hit Star Wars saturation. My shelves were already groaning under the weight of the galaxy far, far away. Even my wife, god love her, whose tolerance for my bullshit is significantly higher than I imagine most wives, gave me the stank eye as I was scrolling Star Wars Shatterpoint mini’s on my iPad.
Star Wars Shatterpoint is absolutely gorgeous; there is absolutely nothing in the market today that can compete, in my opinion. From a visual aesthetic perspective, it’s worth collecting these miniatures just for collecting’s sake.
My decision did not discourage my local gaming crew; several of my friends dove in headfirst, and that gave me plenty of chances to test the game out. And not at all that surprising, my first impression of the game was that it was quite brilliant.
Not perfect, but brilliant.
The core concept of Shatterpoint is rock solid. It leans into what makes Star Wars great: iconic characters in dynamic, cinematic combat. Each unit is asymmetrically powered, meaning Obi-Wan doesn’t feel like Maul, and Maul sure as hell doesn’t feel like Ahsoka. The gameplay itself is objective-driven, fast-paced, and surprisingly smooth, no mid-battle rulebook diving, just action.
Even early on, it felt like there was a ton of room for variety and growth baked into the system, a wide-open hyperspace lane for future expansions, modes, and narrative twists. As a premise, Shatterpoint struck me as one of the most clever designs to come out of the Star Wars gaming space in years.
Even as the game’s initial impression had me grinning from ear to ear, reconsidering my decision to pass on it, I could not shake the feeling that something was both familiar and ever so slightly off.
A Lack of Drama
To understand my hesitation, you have to know a bit about my gaming history, and one of my more cockamamie theories about why I love miniature games in the first place. This is important because if you’re interested in Shatterpoint (or any miniature game), you should know what kind of gamer you are. It’s not always just about reviews and opinions; style and preference should always be considered first and foremost when considering a game for your collection.
So, Marvel: Crisis Protocol came out a few years before Shatterpoint, and the two games share more than a few mechanical similarities. In fact, you could argue they’re essentially the same game wearing different thematic costumes. I wouldn’t entirely sign off on that claim; they do have key differences that give each its own identity, but they clearly spring from the same design philosophy: objective-based gameplay first, theme and setting a distant second.
Star Wars X-Wing didn’t really have objectives, and when they were added later, they didn’t really matter that much, but that was ok because X-Wing just tapped into the Star Wars universe feel with perfection. Feel is a real thing, and when you play enough games, you just know it when it’s there, it sometimes really is just that simple with games.
And that, right there, is where my main issue lies.
To explain that issue properly, I need to be clear about what I value most in a miniatures game. For me, theme, setting, and feel come first, not balance, not clean mechanics, not elegant game loops. I see miniature games as an extension of roleplaying; they should feel like small, tactical stories unfolding on the tabletop. If a game can reflect and bring to life its setting through its mechanics, not just its art and models, that’s when I really connect with it.
I’m not sure that makes perfect sense, but basically: I’d rather a game be thematically authentic than mechanically perfect. I want it to feel like the world it’s portraying, even if that means it’s a little clunky or chaotic. The game should simulate the soul of its universe.
That’s probably why I love games like The Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game, Warhammer 40,000, Blood Bowl, BattleTech, and Star Wars: X-Wing. These games may not be celebrated for their balance or cutting-edge design, but they ooze theme. They play like the worlds they represent. On the other hand, critically acclaimed games like Infinity, Malifaux, or Moonstone, as clever and well-designed as they are, just don’t light that same fire in me. Some I’ve tried. Others I haven’t, because I already know they don’t scratch the same itch.
Take BattleTech, for example. I know it’s not a brilliant design. It’s slow, it’s random, and sometimes it falls apart under its own weight. But it gives me exactly what I want: a messy, explosive mech brawl where missiles fly, limbs get blown off, and heat sinks explode. It’s unpredictable and thematic, and determining a winner is not nearly as important as creating a great memory of that time when X or Y happened. It lives and breathes its world unapologetically, catering to fans of the genre and the story behind the game.
Battletech is an odd mixture so far as games go because the details on a battlemech’s character sheet go further than most RPGs, the rules are thick with unique weaponry and tactics, and the game itself can be excessively long. Yet from a core mechanic perspective, it’s basically a Yatzee dice chucker. You have very limited control over the outcomes of a game, a single missile can ignite an ammo store on your mech and blow you up and it’s game over.
Now enter Shatterpoint, and here’s where my core issue kicks in.
Shatterpoint plays more like a game of chess. Yes, the characters have distinct powers and abilities connected to the Star Wars Universe, but at the end of the day, their job is the same: stand on an objective, push enemies off, and score struggle points to win. It’s a positioning puzzle, a tactical game of movement. Victory isn’t about winning an awesome duel between Vader and Skywalker or taking out the enemy Bounty Hunter or some story arc in the Star Wars universe; it’s about board control, and it’s exclusively and only about that.
The one thing Shatterpoint does well that brings it closer to its theme and makes up for some of the other failures to bring Star Wars to life is the characters. Every character’s powers are distinctly unique and very in tune with their on-screen personas. I think Shatterpoint nailed it in this department.
And that creates a disconnect. It’s supposed to be a game about epic, cinematic duels between legendary characters (that’s on the tin!), but that sense of drama just isn’t there and is often even discouraged. Instead, you get a sterile, tactical experience where the theme takes a back seat.
You may be tempted, for example, to have Obi-Wan descend upon Darth Maul to let them have an epic duel out in the open field because it’s awesome, but everything about that from a gameplay perspective is a mistake. You fight only when it serves the objective, you certainly don’t leave an objective for someone else to grab and it’s far better to send someone less powerful to face Darth Maul to keep him busy, rather than simply fight him for awesome fighting’s sake. That sort of decision-making is not only common but almost mandatory for success. The game doesn’t encourage or reward doing the cool stuff or taking risks; it encourages smart tactical play that serves the purpose of scoring objective points so you can win the struggle.
That might be fine if the struggle had some meaning or story behind it, but unfortunately, that is not the case.
The struggle is a sort of nameless, faceless, inanimate “thing” left undefined beyond the mechanical purpose it serves in the game to determine a winner. You’re not trying to disable the Death Star’s power or blow up the shield generator; you’re trying to score X points before the opponent does. That’s the whole game, every mission is the same, all that changes is some minor thing like which objectives you can score on this round or some quirky special power you might get when drawing a shatter card.
The Struggle Tracker, don’t get me wrong, is a very clever mechanic that builds tension and makes your goals in the game very clear, but it just doesn’t really represent or depict anything. It’s just this abstract thing that’s there to remind you if you’re winning or losing.
Don’t get me wrong, the mechanics are sharp. The game is well-designed. It’s an interesting, engaging system. But the Star Wars theme doesn’t matter to the gameplay itself, nor do the circumstances of the battle have any meaning, being indistinct “brawls” for positional control. Even the objective carries no thematic weight; being nothing more than a “spot” on the field, you need to be within 2 inches to control. It’s all very pragmatic, absent of any meaning, story, or connection to the Star Wars universe. A terrible missed opportunity!
I bring up Marvel: Crisis Protocol in the same conversation because it suffers from the exact same issue. For all the cool miniatures and superhero flair, the gameplay doesn’t reflect the universe it’s based on in any meaningful way. It’s not a battle between Dr. Strange and a multiverse demon to control the book of Vishanti; it’s a contest of who can hold objective A or B long enough to score enough points before the round ends. It’s just absent of the flavor that makes the Marvel Universe, its history, and setting special and fun.
Marvel Crisis Protocol, in a way, is a worse offender in the absence of theme, setting, and story connection as a game. There is literally an unlimited amount of story material on which to build events, missions, and stories for the game. For them to settle on abstract objectives, completely disconnecting the game from this potential, is, I would argue, inexcusable.
Both games, I don’t want to say, feel soulless, but lack a certain commitment to simulating and supporting the theme and the cinematic spectacle you hope to discover when you play them. That’s a harsh critique, I know, but it’s the one thing that keeps me from diving into either of them; no matter how good the sculpts look or how tight the mechanics are, these games more or less boils down to a game of positioning. There is no story, induction of Star Wars or Marvel events, or a meaningful way in which the setting’s epicness comes to the surface.
Is it a fun game? Is it a good game?
Those are relative questions, and when it comes to Star Wars: Shatterpoint, the answer depends entirely on what you think makes a miniature game fun or good in the first place. There’s no objective measure here. It’s all a matter of personal taste, and that’s the exact crossroads where I find myself.
From my perspective, Shatterpoint is a well-designed game. It’s streamlined, it runs cleanly, and there’s very little rules ambiguity. The tactical puzzle is real and rewarding, especially if that’s the kind of game you enjoy. And if you’re the type who thrives on smart plays, tight decisions, and clever planning, then yes, it’s fun. In that regard, it delivers.
And I do enjoy it, at least to a degree. There’s something undeniably satisfying about seeing iconic Star Wars characters brought to life on the tabletop. I’m not completely opposed to brainy, tactical games either. Shatterpoint challenges you to think ahead, adapt, and outmaneuver. It’s a solid mental workout.
But for me, the experience falls short in one crucial area: the connection between game and setting.
Yes, the game has objectives, but they are abstract, disconnected from the world they’re supposed to represent. I love a good mission-driven game, but only if those missions feel rooted in the narrative. If Shatterpoint had objectives that tied into iconic Star Wars moments or scenarios, or even just leaned harder into the drama of its duels, I think it would go from an “interesting game” to a great experience.
Instead, it stops just short. It teases greatness, but doesn’t quite land it. It’s missing something vital, and tragically, that something happens to be the only thing that truly matters to me. The one and pretty much only thing I care about when I play a miniature game.
A good story.
And so ends the anxiety over whether or not I will buy into Shatterpoint.
In the last year, I realized something about my gaming habits and preferences that perhaps I should have, but never did notice. I seem to be a bit of a gaming hipster!? I think…
When I think about the sorts of games I like, regardless of category or genre, I find my tastes are a bit unusual compared to pretty much anyone I know around me. In fact, it’s kind of a problem because I very rarely get to actually play the games I would play if it were exclusively just up to me. Part of this I think, has to do with my age, I have been playing games for nearly 4 decades at this point, at least 2-3 decades more than most of my peers, which might explain my tastes to some degree; nostalgia and all that.
Regardless, in the spirit of Hipsterism, I thought I would talk about my preferences a bit, which, by default, has produced a kind of Hipster list!
What I will do is choose a genre of gaming, and for each genre, I will assume that I have a gaming group raring to play this weekend. Which game would I choose!?
Role-Playing Game
I’m going to split Role-Playing into three sub-genres because I do see RPG’s as something of a quirk of mine and picking just one game just won’t do.
Fantasy – 1st Edition AD&D
The classics in their original form can still be enjoyed thanks to the Wizards of the Coast reprints.
Here’s the thing: I love fantasy RPG’s—truly. I could spend hours agonizing over a top 10 list, shuffling titles around, and second-guessing myself. But one thing is certain: Classic 1st edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons is one of the most robust and compelling RPG traditions ever created for fantasy storytelling. Hands down.
Note, I did not call 1st edition AD&D a game, because to me, it’s always been more than just that, nor would I exactly escribe it as an RPG by today’s standards. AD&D is unique, a game with a very special approach and essence which did not exist before it in any game and has not been replicated in any games since. Every version of D&D that followed lost sight of this hidden essence, that magic that exists between the game as a rule set and the tradition that was born in Gygax’s definitive work. AD&D as a gaming tradition, an activity, and a collaborative storytelling tool, far exceeded the presumed simplicity of being a rule system and a game. I don’t know that Gygax intended for this to be true about his game, quite to the contrary, I think he was trying to create just that, a definitive rule set with AD&D, but like any art form, happy accidents happen. That happy little accident would never again be repeated, and every edition of the game has tried but failed to recapture the magic of the original.
Mind you, this is not for the lack of trying; in fact, I think most editions of the game have tried very hard to mirror the magic of AD&D, but the truth is that most designers even today can’t fully explain why this original version is different. I don’t think I could fully explain it either; it just is. An intangible quality exists in AD&D that is simply ineffable. As ineffable as it may be, I feel obligated to at least try to explain it, but I say this here and now, this is NOT about nostalgia.
Why do I gravitate toward this strange and inexplicable classic? Because I’ve always believed (as did Gygax) and still do that the most powerful, memorable role-playing happens when players don’t know the rules inside and out of how it’s done behind the screen. In the case of AD&D, it’s mostly because the rules are unknowable, thanks to the cryptic way in which they are described in what I consider the most important book in the RPG hobby ever written, the 1st edition AD&D Dungeon Master’s Guide.
The 1st edition Dungeon Masters Guide is one of the most unique books ever written. It doesn’t just guide you through the process of creating worlds for players to live in, but it teaches you how to present that world in a way that will inspire players to believe in it.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a critique of AD&D. Every player, given the chance, will lean into what they know; it’s only natural that when you know the rules of a game, you start using those rules to your advantage as a game. True magic happens when players don’t know how the game works. The less they know, the more they have to trust their natural instincts at the table. Not knowing the rules activates your imagination, and players start acting like people living in a story rather than characters moving through a system. They make choices that feel right, because they don’t have the option to make sure their choices are mechanically sound. This is the magic of AD&D, it refuses you the foundation of rules upon which to make decisions, leaving you to your collaborative imaginations. Some (in fact, most) would argue this is bad game design, but I would argue that it’s perfect game design. It makes the act of role-playing the only avenue for all participants. There is no game here upon which to hang your hat.
And that’s where the magic happens.
Especially in fantasy, where gods walk the earth, monsters lurk in the dark, and magic bends the very fabric of reality. Not knowing how everything works is a feature, not a bug. It creates a sense of wonder, of discovery, of trying things to see what they do. Players aren’t just learning about the world, they’re learning how its very physics of the world operates.
There were many versions of Dungeons and Dragons, both official and unofficial, but every book that followed 1st edition AD&D strived to be a rulebook first, presenting the game as a mechanical architecture for creating a game at the table that everyone, especially players, could understand. Only 1st edition AD&D saw itself as a creative toolkit for collaborative storytelling, targeting the DM as its master.
For me, 1st Edition AD&D will always be my first love and for that it can be easy to write it off as nostalgia and often with old school games this is the case with me, but not so with AD&D. If I had the chance, I’d run a classic game exactly as I believe it was always meant to be played: with a little mystery, a lot of imagination, and just enough chaos to keep everyone guessing.
Science-Fiction – Alternity
I was this close to picking The Aliens RPG by Free League Games. It’s a fantastic system for intense, edge-of-your-seat one-shots. But let’s be honest: once the xenomorphs are out in the open, the mystery that is the Alien movies vanishes, and with it, a lot of the drama. It’s hard to stretch that tension into a long-term campaign without it wearing thin, despite the fantastic game design that went into the Aliens RPG. I love it, but a good foundation for a long term RPG campaign – it’s not. It is a one-shot, nothing more, nothing less.
If Gygax is the pioneer of fantasy RPG’s, there is no question that Bill Slaviscek and Richard Baker were the pioneers of science-fiction RPG’s. Alternity is a master class in how science fiction should be approached as a storytelling game.
So in the end, it came down to a real heavyweight match: Star Wars RPG by West End Games versus Alternity by TSR/Wizards of the Coast. And while both hold their own with style and substance, I give the edge to Alternity for one reason only: The Stardrive campaign setting.
The setting designed by Richard Baker, one of the sharpest minds in the business, pushed Alternity over the top for me. It’s original, ambitious, and packed with the kind of rich lore that inspires long-term storytelling.
The Stardrive campaign setting is an epic tale of humanity’s rise to the stars, and despite being written in the late 90’s, the history of this setting rings more true today than it did back then. It’s a fascinating read, almost as if it’s a prediction.
But Alternity as a system is more than just a great way to bring a setting to life. It’s the unsung pioneer of the d20 era. Before 3rd Edition D&D made the mechanic mainstream, Alternity was already out there, blending class-based progression with skill-based freedom in a way that felt sleek and forward-thinking. It wasn’t just a set of rules, it was a toolkit for building any kind of science fiction world you could dream up. It’s the tragedy of the 21st century that Wizards of the Coast would take the d20 system invented with such perfection and completely botch it over the course of 3rd, 4th, and 5th edition D&D. They had the perfect model for a perfect system and decided to foolishly ignore it, but I digress.
Need spacefaring starships, cybernetic upgrades, rogue AIs, mutant powers, alien civilizations..the list goes on and on! It’s all there. Not just as a flavor, but with clean, well-designed mechanics that make it all sing at the table. There is no science-fiction setting that has ever been or ever will be created that you can’t replicate with perfection with the Alternity RPG.
I still believe that West End Games take on Star Wars is the best version of a Star Wars RPG to date. In effect, it makes Star Wars feel more hard science fiction, unlike the movies that pushed the setting into science fantasy.
Alternity gave us a framework where science fiction didn’t just feel possible, it felt limitless. That’s why, for me, it’s the gold standard for sci-fi roleplaying.
If I was going to run a science-fiction game today, there is no question it would be Alternity. The only exception I would make is for Star Wars, in that case, it would be the West End version of the game.
Other – Mage The Ascension
Over the past thirty years, I’ve run World of Darkness chronicles more times than I can count, and every single one stands out in my memory. There’s something about this universe that sticks with you. It comes in many shades: vampires brooding in neon-lit alleys, werewolves howling at the edge of the apocalypse, and wraiths lost in their own sorrow. But the default flavor has always been Vampire: The Masquerade.
And don’t get me wrong, Vampire deserves its fame. It’s probably the most iconic and approachable entry in the World of Darkness line, and for good reason. But if you came to me right now and said, “Run a World of Darkness game,” I know exactly what I’d pick: Mage: The Ascension.
Like Vampire, Mage puts players in the shoes of powerful supernatural beings. But where Vampire centers on politics, survival, and control over the mortal underworld, something players can more easily connect with, Mage reaches for something far more abstract and far more profound.
One of the big burdens of Mage The Ascension is that it’s focused on a wide range of unique takes on belief systems. It’s one of those RPG’s where everyone needs to read it cover to cover to really understand it, it’s difficult to present it as a GM. White Wolf games require a lot of self-reading because so much of the games storytelling is buried in the details of the setting and aesthetic backdrops, but nowhere is this more true than Mage.
In Mage, your faction isn’t just a club or a bloodline, it’s a belief system. A worldview. And the war isn’t over turf or influence, it’s over control of reality itself.
The Technocracy reigns in the modern age, shaping the world through science, reason, and the rigid laws of physics. But the twist is that, this version of reality is just another kind of magic, one that’s been accepted by consensus. Other mages, the ones who Awaken to alternate truths (the players), fight back not with bullets or blades but with paradigm-shattering ideas. The conflict is philosophical, spiritual, and metaphysical; the journey I can only describe as a mind-bending acid trip.
When you run Mage, you’re telling a story about characters who don’t just cast magic, they reshape the fabric of existence. And the more they push, the more the world pushes back. It’s a game where players don’t just feel powerful, they begin to believe in the power of belief itself.
To this day, I’ve never had the chance to run a full Mage chronicle—and I’ve been itching to do so for years. I love this setting. I ache for the chance to guide a group through its mysteries. If the opportunity ever came up? Let’s just say I’d be all in.
Boardgames
When it comes to board games, the number of categories is ridiculous, and I could make a solid argument for any of them. If, however, you forced me to pick three, forsaking all others, I think this would be the list.
Lifestyle Games – Twilight Imperium
Without question, the single best boardgame ever designed…period.
If I could conjure up a dedicated group of Twilight Imperium fans with the snap of my fingers, I’d be running a weekly game in a heartbeat, and I doubt I’d ever get tired of it. I know because I once had that, and it was and still is to this day, the best boardgaming experience I have ever had. It’s an irreplaceable memory that I will always chase because, in my view, Twilight Imperium is a one-of-a-kind masterpiece.
Twilight Imperium isn’t just a board game. It’s a commitment, a journey, and for those willing to invest the time, it becomes something greater: a lifestyle. This is a game with layers on top of layers. What looks at first like a complex 4X space opera transforms into an ever-evolving, deeply human drama of ambition, alliances, betrayals, and vision.
Yes, it’s long. But that time investment isn’t a drawback it’s what allows the story to breathe. The game unfolds like an epic saga, each session an emergent narrative shaped by the choices, fears, and aspirations of the players around the table. It’s a game that brings out raw human drama, both imagined and real at the table. I have seen how passionate players can get about this game and I thirst for those experiences.
On the surface, Twilight Imperium is a combination of a civilization builder and war game, filled with rich lore, factions with asymmetric powers, and galactic conquest. But dig deeper, and you’ll find a game of psychology, political maneuvering, negotiation, and strategic bluffing. As I like to call it, the real game behind the mechanical one. Every move is loaded with meaning. Every word spoken a ploy. Every silence held can shift the balance of power.
You don’t just play Twilight Imperium, you live it for the duration of the game. You embody your faction’s ethos. You forge uneasy alliances, backstab former friends, and navigate the ever-turbulent currents of the Galactic Council. You calculate every vote, every trade, every fleet deployment with a mix of tactical precision and raw gut instinct.
With two dozen unique factions, dynamic objectives, modular galaxy maps, and endless human variables, Twilight Imperium offers infinite replayability. It’s a true modern masterpiece, an epic that’s far too often overlooked because of its scale and length. But for those who make the leap, the rewards are unmatched.
This used to be a game I played all the time and I can’t think of any gaming experience I miss more, it’s right up there with 1st edition AD&D and Battletech!
Tactical Games – Battletech
Its a cross between boardgaming, miniature gaming and role-playing.
Some might call BattleTech a miniatures game and sure, technically it is. But to me? It’s always been a dice-chucker board game disguised as a tactical miniature game, dressed up in pewter and plastic, pretending to be part of the miniatures crowd while doing its own brilliant thing as a role-playing game. It’s a strange mixture but it works.
BattleTech is incredible for three big reasons.
First, the lore. It’s a sprawling, obsessively detailed tapestry of interstellar warfare, dynasties, betrayals, and battle mechs the size of small buildings. You can trace the fictional design history of a single ‘Mech model, who built it, where it was deployed, how it evolved with more depth and nuance than many real-world war machines. We’re talking more lore than Warhammer 40k, and I don’t say that lightly. If you’re a story-driven gamer like me, this universe is an absolute goldmine of narrative potential. It’s a robust setting that rivals most role-playing games.
Second, the game itself. The core mechanics of BattleTech have remained remarkably intact for over 40 years. In a world where games are constantly rebooted, patched, streamlined, or gutted for new editions and marketing cycles, BattleTech is a white elephant. Buy a rulebook or a miniature in the ‘80s, and your game is still valid today. Still playable. Still awesome. That kind of long-term commitment to players and collectors is practically unheard of in the tabletop world. And here’s the kicker: as of 2025, BattleTech is the third-highest-grossing miniatures game in the world. Proof positive that you don’t need to screw over your fanbase with constant reinvention for a cash grab to make a living in the industry.
But honestly, those first two reasons are just icing on the cake. The real reason you should play BattleTech is this:
It’s a glorious, chaotic, beer-and-pretzels dice chucking tactical slugfest. A crunchy, customizable, story-driven war game where everything that can go wrong probably will — and that’s the fun of it. Yes, there’s tactical play, but this isn’t chess. This is a cinematic, slow-motion trainwreck of overheating engines, ammo explosions, critical hits, and desperate Hail Mary maneuvers. It’s a game where you feel the damage, as your mech gets carved apart limb by limb in a ballet of ballistic fire and reactor meltdowns.
Only one other game I’ve played, Warmachine, gets anywhere near the same granular feel of mechanized combat. Unfortunately, like most miniature games, the constant rule changes, reboots, and updates completely ruined Warmachine. Battletech has stayed the course and remains all about managing your loadout, balancing your heat, and watching as your prized war machine limps across the battlefield, missing an arm and trailing smoke. That’s peak drama. That’s BattleTech.
I love this game. Always have. It’s one of the few on my shelf where pieces I bought in the ‘80s can legitimately still hit the table, no updates needed, no strings attached.
Sadly, like many of my hipster gaming passions, BattleTech isn’t exactly mainstream in my circles. I rarely get to play these days. But if someone asked me to drop everything for a match?
Hell yes. I’d be there in a heartbeat.
Event Games – Western Empire (Advanced Civilization)
The original Avalon Hill version of this game was quite ugly, like many games back then, they lived in your imagination which was kind of the point of table top gaming in general.
If you’ve followed this blog for any length of time, you already know War Room is one of my favorite event games. It doesn’t make the hipster list, though, mostly because I actually get to play it and I believe it to be a well-designed modern game, there is nothing hipster about it. My friends are kind enough to indulge me once a year (usually around my birthday), and while it’s big, bold, and unique, at the end of the day, it’s still an Axis & Allies descendant.
Now Western Empires, or as I still instinctively call it, Advanced Civilization, is hipster gaming royalty.
Shut up and sit down, I think did the best and most honest review of this game I have ever seen, flaws and all, but they their is one observation that they sort of failed to make which is that what they saw as flaws in the game from a gamers perspective are very intentionally designed features. It’s sort of like accusing Star Wars of having too many lightsabers.
I’ve talked about this game plenty before, and for good reason. It’s a sprawling, epic beast of a board game. Designed for a minimum of five players, though let’s be honest, it really wants nine (yeah you heard that right). Clocking in at a cool 12 to 15 hours, it’s less a game and more a full-day historical event. It is, without exaggeration, one of the hardest games to actually get to the table.
To put it in perspective, I haven’t played a live game of Advanced Civilization in over 20 years. Two decades. And yet, I’ve always kept a copy on my shelf. Just in case. Always hopeful that one day this one will get its moment in the sun.
At its core, Western Empires is a game of historical empire-building and economic maneuvering. There’s trading. There’s a touch of area control. Sometimes, it even pretends to be a war game. But really, it’s about managing the wild, unpredictable chaos of history. You stretch your reach, you push your luck, and you try to outmaneuver your rivals not with brute force, but with sharp wits and sharper tongues.
One of the biggest reasons this game rarely hits the table, aside from the sheer time investment and player count requirements, is that modern gamers often expect strategy games to reward clever, clean moves. Western Empires doesn’t care about your strategic brilliance. This is not a game of perfectly calculated efficiency. It’s a game of negotiation, adaptability, and psychological warfare. The best players aren’t the ones with the most optimal city placement, unit movement or strategic planning. They’re the ones who can read a room, spin a trade, and deliver a betrayal with a smile while staying the course of the inevitable and uncontrollable ups and downs of the game’s natural ebb and flow.
You don’t play the game, you play the players. That’s where the real magic is.
There’s really nothing else quite like it. The closest modern comparison might be Small World, and that’s a real stretch for a comparison, as it matches only some of the subtle nuances of mechanics. Western Empires occupies a weird, wonderful niche all on its own.
And that’s why it’s here, on the hipster list. I know full well this kind of game isn’t for everyone. Hell, it’s barely for anyone. Finding eight other souls who are all willing to commit an entire day to a relic of the 80s is an impossible task in most gaming circles. But if I ever found the right group, you better believe I’d make this a yearly tradition, right up there with War Room.
Quirky, chaotic, and criminally underplayed. That’s what the hipster list is all about.
Euro Games –
Miniature Games
When it comes to miniature games I would argue there are also quite a few different ways these games can be categorized, but I think a simple way to do it would be to split it between casual games and competitive games. It’s a broad, but it’s easy to distinguish way to do it. I would only add one third category, which I would call semi-miniature games, in which I would place miniature games that don’t have a miniature painting hobby component at all.
Casual – Warhammer 40k
40k is an all-encompassing hobby, stretching far beyond simply playing the game, and that is kind of the point of it. It’s a bit like loving Star Wars.
Ironically, in 2025, playing the most popular miniature game in the world might be the most hipster thing you can do.
Why? Because the moment Warhammer 40k comes up in conversation, it’s almost guaranteed someone will start rattling off a list of games that are “better in every way” and listing all the things that are wrong with 40k. And they’re not wrong, there are more balanced, more strategic, more thoughtfully designed games out there, lots of them. But sticking with something you know could be objectively replaced by a dozen superior alternatives? That’s peak hipster energy!
But let’s talk about the most fascinating part of the 40k experience: the community.
Across the globe, the Warhammer 40k community treats the game like a competitive titan, and to be fair, it is the largest and most active competitive tournament scene in all of tabletop gaming, by a long shot. The sheer scale of organized play is staggering.
And yet… Games Workshop, the company behind 40k, doesn’t seem to agree. At all.
To GW, Warhammer 40k is primarily a miniature line, secondarily a source of lore and novels, and somewhere far down the list, it’s technically a game. Their support for competitive play feels more like a reluctant nod to what the community chooses to do with their game, than a purposeful commitment or intent for it. The rules are often unbalanced, the game systems are regularly reworked or mismanaged, and it’s clear that game design is not what drives the brand. What we have here is a competitive community built on a system that was never meant to bear the weight of serious play. And somehow… it thrives on that very thing.
In a word, I would argue that Warhammer 40k is not a great competitive game, and when people trash-talk it, that’s really what they are talking about. But it’s a fantastic hobby and a super fun, casual experience, aka, exactly what it’s designed to be.
It’s a beer-and-pretzels dice-chucker in a gothic sci-fi shell, where the real joy comes from painting your army, crafting your own narrative, and then putting it all on the table to roll some dice and blow stuff up. The rules are often clunky, the strategy is there only to a point, but largely buried under layers of “smoke and mirrors.” Winning isn’t about mastering a perfect system, it usually comes down to how well you roll the dice.
And despite all that? I love it.
The mission system is genuinely dynamic, with flavorful objectives and varied scenarios that keep the game feeling fresh. The list-building is wide open, full of creative options and wild combos. But at its core, this is a casual game through and through, one that thrives on the atmosphere around the table and the lore on which it’s based, not in the pursuit of perfection of its gameplay.
Warhammer 40k is about collecting and painting miniatures, swapping war stories, and diving into the endless supply of pulpy, over-the-top lore of a universe where everything is grim, dark, and somehow still gloriously silly.
It’s a hobby. A vibe. A lifestyle, even. Flaws and all, I wouldn’t trade it for anything else.
Competative – Songs of Ice and Fire
I would argue that Songs of Ice and Fire the miniature game is the only rank and file miniature game ever made that actually works well as a game rather than a terrible history lesson about how boring war on the battlefield actually is.
I’ll be the first to admit: I don’t play A Song of Ice & Fire much these days. It’s had a rough road, marred by some truly questionable management decisions over the years and plagued with availability problems. But even with all that baggage, I still consider it one of the most compelling competitive miniature games out there.
This is very much a game that lives in the “I wish” category. I wish it had been better supported, wish it had stuck the landing in balance and they did it all much faster, and wish it still had a place at my table. There’s a part of me that’s still hopeful it’ll stabilize and find its footing again, maybe even make a comeback in my group.
I went in deep on this one. Despite its flaws, I found A Song of Ice & Fire to be one of the most engaging strategy games to hit the miniature scene since Star Wars: Armada. At its core is a genuinely smart design, layered list-building, unique unit interactions, and some fascinating sub-war game mechanics like the NCU board and tactical card play. When it clicked, it really clicked.
Except when it didn’t.
To be fair, most of the problems I ran into weren’t with the design itself — they were with the balance. And yes, you could argue that design and balance go hand in hand (and you wouldn’t be wrong), but I still think there’s a meaningful distinction. A game can be brilliantly designed but hampered by poor balancing decisions, one can be fine-tuned, the other is just a flaw. That’s A Song of Ice & Fire in a nutshell: great foundation, uneven execution.
Now, I haven’t kept up with the latest updates, so maybe things are better these days. But in my local scene, the damage was done, people moved on, and getting a game back into circulation after a group loses faith in it is no small feat.
And then, there’s the personal hurdle: painting.
This one’s tough for me. Being a mass army game, ASOIAF demands batch painting. Lots of similar models, unit after unit, rank after rank. And repetitive painting is my kryptonite. I just can’t stay motivated painting the same miniature ten times in a row. It sucks the joy out of the hobby for me, and ASOIAF is particularly brutal in that regard with no list building avoidance some games offer.
All that said? I still think this is a fantastic game. It deserves recognition. It’s competitive, it’s clever, and when it’s running smoothly, it offers a rich tactical experience that not many miniature games can match. That’s why it earns a spot on the hipster list, a flawed gem that still shines when the light hits just right.
That said… its time may be running out. Modern miniature design is evolving fast, and with games like Warcrow on the horizon, strong contenders are lining up to take this slot permanently.
The Most Fun – Star Wars: X-Wing
In my mind, Star Wars X-Wing is still one of the best miniature games ever made. PERIOD.
When talking about the miniature game hobby, there’s always one title that sparks debate, some say it barely qualifies as a miniatures game at all. I’m talking about X-Wing. And frankly, I don’t buy the skepticism. Slap those sleek ships onto a sprue and suddenly there’d be no doubt where it belongs.
Yes, it’s pre-painted. Yes, it’s more accessible than most. But that doesn’t disqualify it, it redefines the space. X-Wing was designed to walk the tightrope between a serious competitive game and a relaxed casual experience, and it succeeded. Brilliantly. This game brought three key advantages to the table that most miniature games either ignore or fail to execute well. And those three factors are why X-Wing stood tall in the market for years, even managing to shake Games Workshop out of its golden-era complacency.
First, the pacing. X-Wing matches are quick, typically 45 minutes. That’s practically warp speed in miniature gaming terms. It made the game ideal for tournaments and casual nights. You could run multiple matches in an evening, try out a bunch of new lists, and still have time to argue about who really shot first. There’s no hour-long rules refresh or setup slog—just “Hey, want to play?” and you’re in. That kind of approachability is rare in the hobby.
Second, it’s Star Wars. That’s not just thematic dressing—it’s a gateway. The brand brings in people who’ve never even looked twice at a miniature game. You don’t have to explain the appeal of piloting an X-Wing. You show someone the TIE Fighters screaming across the table, and they’re already halfway sold. I’ve never seen a non-gamer pick up Warhammer 40K on a whim. But X-Wing? That’s the one that brings in the curious, the casual, the movie fans, the dads and uncles and kids who just want to fly the Falcon.
Third, and maybe most importantly, X-Wing made high-level tactical play accessible. The rules were simple on the surface, but the depth was staggering. Movement planning, arc dodging, list synergies, action economy, there was real meat on those bones. You didn’t have to learn 200 pages of codex lore to be competitive. But if you wanted to go deep, the game rewarded you. It hit that perfect balance: easy to learn, hard to master.
X-Wing wasn’t just another miniatures game. It was a lightning-in-a-bottle moment in the hobby. It opened the door to a new audience, streamlined what was possible in design, and reminded the rest of the industry that a game could be both fast and deep, fun and tactical, cinematic and competitive.
Whether you play it today or remember it from its heyday, X-Wing deserves its place in the conversation, not just as a miniature game, but as one of the best games to ever grace a tabletop. In my personal opinion, its the single best miniature game that we have gotten in the 4 decades of I’ve been around.
Best Design – Star Wars Armada
When first announced, everyone thought that this would be X-Wing but with capital ships. It certainly looks the part, but Star Wars Armada is an entirely different and far heavier game that demanded a lot more from its audiance.
One final entry I’d like to sneak onto the hipster list—and I say this with as much objectivity as a subjective opinion can carry—is my pick for the best-designed miniature game out there.
To take this crown, a game has to meet a singular, uncompromising criterion: skill must reign supreme. Like chess, where grandmasters fall only to their peers, this kind of game leaves no room for chance to decide the victor. It must be a pure contest of mastery, where the dice are just accessories, not arbiters of fate. And in the world of miniatures, that game is Star Wars: Armada.
Sure, there are dice. But make no mistake, those little cubes only matter when two evenly matched minds clash. In Armada, outcomes are forged not by luck, but by foresight, precision, and relentless practice. It’s a game that rewards not just play, but study. The kind of study that turns casual fans into hardened tacticians.
But here’s where it gets really compelling: Armada doesn’t just test you on the battlefield. It demands mastery before the first ship even hits the table. The list-building is deep, nuanced, and packed with options that will make your head spin if you’re not ready for it. Understanding the shifting meta, anticipating counter-play, these are not fringe skills, they’re the bedrock of victory. The game is highly deterministic, which means your preparation matters as much, if not more, than your moment-to-moment decision-making at the table.
That it’s set in the Star Wars universe, with massive capital ships slugging it out in glorious slow-motion ballet? That’s just the sweet, sweet icing on a very dense, very intimidating cake. But fair warning: Armada is not a casual fling. It’s a demanding, often unforgiving beast that can feel downright brutal if you approach it half-heartedly. You don’t play Armada, you train for it, like a chess grandmaster gearing up for the championship board.
In the early 80’s there were three games that really defined what would become the tabletop gaming hobby. Dungeons and Dragons, Warhammer 40k, and Magic The Gathering. Magic The Gathering of course is the grandaddy of collectible card games but fast forward over 40 years later and CCG’s have become a sub-hobby all on their own.
I don’t talk about CCG’s very often but in the last decade, CCG’s have gone through something of a renaissance and with each new CCG that has come out, the genre is making leaps and bounds for the better.
In today’s list, I will pick my top 10 collectible card games from the awesome past to the wonderful present. Enjoy the list!
10. Legend Of The Five Rings (1st edition)
Legend of the Five Rings 1st edition by Alderace Entertainment falls into what I like to call the “Hardcore CCGs” category from the 90’s . This was a fairly robust game from a robust gaming era that was very heavy on the theme and backstory and for fans out there, it wasn’t just a card game but much like other early CCG’s like Magic The Gathering, Legend of the Five Rings was a lifestyle game.
I think what separated LotFR from other LCG’s was that it was part of a multifaceted franchise that covered gaming as part of a spectrum. You had Legend of the Five Rings RPG which in the 90’s was competing against heavy hitters like D&D and Vampire The Masquerade. You also had a miniature game line called Clan War which competed against the Gameswork shop heavy hitters like Warhammer Fantasy. Finally, you had a huge library of novels dedicated to the story of this amazing game world, books which when released coincided with card set releases so that when you read a book about a certain part of the history of the game, you then got to play it out in the card game.
Unfortunately despite very modest economic success, Legend of the Five Rings in all its forms was never terribly popular and never reached anything beyond its extremely niche audience.
Fantasy Flight Games picked up the rights to the Legend of the Five Rings and revised the game in a second edition, but this too saw only minimal success and ultimately faded out of existence rather quickly.
This game was made for fans and it catered very heavily to this niche audience. In my humble opinion, this is one of the all-time classics that rightfully deserves to be on this list even if it’s at the tail end. It is an amazingly rich and complex game with tons of great lore to support it and without question, some of the best art ever put on a gaming card. Awesome, albeit retired CCG.
9. Magic The Gathering
I was hesitant to put this one on the list at all because I could file a 500-page novel worth of complaints about it, its design, the company that runs it, and the endless stream of bullshit that makes this a game I have no desire to play at all.
Still, there was a time when I lived and breathed magic and it wasn’t a short time, most of the 90’s by my estimation. Like other games from the 90’s Magic The Gathering was a lifestyle game and equally as all games in the 90’s, it was mostly broken as fuck!
Yet, Magic The Gathering endures and by all accounts it’s still one of the most popular CCG’s on the market today and this has been so since its inception. No CCG ever has nor likely will come even within a light year of the success Magic The Gathering has seen. Magic The Gathering sells more cards in a year than all other CCG’s combined sell in a decade. In a word, there is no such thing as “competition” when it comes to market share, Magic The Gathering rules undisputed.
How? Why? It’s a good question. Mechanically Magic The Gathering has a lot of design flaws that would never be put into a game today. It’s a game where you can build a legal tournament deck in which you can win a match before your opponent ever gets a turn to play. You can build decks that spawn an infinite number of monsters, or do an infinite amount of damage. The amount of stupid shit in this game is endless but I think the reason people like it and perhaps rightfully so is not despite these things but because of them.
There is something uniquely clever to a game that has so much depth and interaction, that if you study it long and hard, you can completely unravel it.
I crap on it, but it is the granddaddy of CCG’s and this list would be incomplete if I did not put it on the list so here it is, but frankly, I can think of a 100 CCG’s I rather play than Magic The Gathering. It does however have its charm, I can’t deny that of all the games on this list, I have played Magic The Gathering the most and so its place in CCG history and this list is secured.
8. Vampire Eternal Struggle
Vampire Eternal Struggle is to me, everything you think you want to have in a great CCG, which results in an overcooked game to a point where the game is nearly unplayable. Its a effectively a game that appears to be designed by Vampire The Masquerade fans that kind of don’t know what they are doing, but fully understand what a Vampire The Masquerade CCG should feel like, if that makes any sense. This was not all that unusual for a card game in the 90’s, making stupidly complex card games was kind of a thing back then, but even so far as complex CCG’s go, Vampire Eternal Struggle stretched the definition.
This was a game that could take upwards of 3-4+ hours to finish a single match, there was a ridiculous amount of rules weight and card interaction and in a lot of ways it mimicked the obscene level of detail that was customary in The Vampire The Masquerade RPG.
As overcooked as it was, however, there was true magic in the way the game executed because it did what White-Wolf RPGs were famous for which was to tell an amazing story. This was a game that even though I haven’t played it for 20 years, I still remember specific matches I had. All-nighters where me and a couple of friends effectively created our own little micro-universe for an evening in the world of darkness.
It was a unique game in a couple of ways. First and foremost it was best played in multiplayer, rather than head-to-head which separated it from most of the CCG’s out there that had modes for multiplayer but weren’t designed for it. The second thing was that you had this amazing world of darkness behind it, a setting so fleshed out and so recognizable to fans that each card had impact and meaning that went well beyond anything you would expect to be able to put into a card. Above all else, however, it was a brutish and harsh – take that – kind of a game, with ruthless mechanics that brought a lot of emotion and player interaction that went well beyond the mechanics of the game, much like the RPG on which it’s based.
This was a fantastic CCG and recently the game was revised and reprinted so it is still very much available today for people to explore. I would caution however that this is a game made for Vampire The Masquerade fans, by Vampire The Masquerade fans. If you don’t know what that is and why it’s awesome, this game is definitly not for you, if you do, you probobly already know about this game and don’t need me to tell you how awesome it is.
7. Arkham Horror LCG
Arkham Horror the card game was released by Fantasy Flight Games in 2016 during a period when FFG was producing CCG’s under the Living Card Game strategy where rather than having random booster packs, you would have pre-constructed expansions. It was also not a competitive card game but rather a cooperative card game in which players would effectively go around a dynamically constructed game board based on a location and solve mysterious while fighting monsters using decks they built.
I own and love this game, I actually think it’s pretty fantastic but generally speaking I also think it has one major flaw which is that it’s a cooperative game where once you complete a “quest”, it’s a bit like a legacy game where a lot of the hype and excitement disappears and the game starts feeling like your watching a scrooby-doo re-runs.
The format just lacks sustainability and while I still love picking this game up every long once in a while and playing a few rounds, it lacks freshness unless you are constantly buying the latest expansions. I did that for a while until I realized that I would effectively play each expansion once and then never go back to it because I knew the story, I knew the mystery, I had figured it all out.
It’s a very fun game mechanically but it almost feels like it would have done a lot better if the “quest” creation was turned over to the community and the game was a digital card game rather than a physical one. If you had an endless stream of new challenges that you could play on a daily or weekly basis, I think the game would have a lot more longevity.
Needless to say, even with this one flaw, I think this is a brilliant game and deserves to be on this list.
6. Warhammer 40k Conquest
I have to admit I only played this game a few times and never actually bought into it and there is good reason for it, but still the few times I played it, it made a big impact on me and I always think of it whenever the subject of CCG’s comes up. Like Arkham Horror this was one of many Fantasy Flights LCG’s (Living Card Games), but it was a 2 player competitive game. I think this is one of the most underrated competitive card games out there today.
The theme and franchise appreciation here is important as the card game and the cards themselves capture the Warhammer 40k universe perfectly but what I think really made this game stand out is that the interaction and speed of play was balanced perfectly. It’s a tight game where players are making impactful decisions with each card play and games are almost always definined by decision rather than deck or card draw, it really is a game of pure strategy and I think that is actually kind of rare in card games. Most CCG’s are defined by deck building as much as strategy but this one is one of those games where what deck you played mattered considerably less than what you do with it at the table.
Above and beyond that however I think the asymetrical factions really shine here, each faction had its own thing going on and FFG made sure every faction of the 40k universe was covered before the game went end of life so its a self contained and very complete feeling card game set. The fact that it went out of print and is no longer supported doesn’t matter and thankfully they printed so much of this game its actually quite easy and cheap to get a hold of a complete collection.
Really fun game, I think this is still well worth getting today even if its out of print. Just a very good, self contained, head to head experience built around an awesome franchise and a great theme. A game made for 40k fans.
The only reason I have personally never bought into is that in my gaming group, at the time, we had a lot of stuff going on gaming wise and it was a rare situation where economically I had to make some tough calls. I regret that, I wished I owned the entire set and plan to some day soon purchase it for my collection.
5. Star Wars Destiny
Heading into the top 5 on my list, it would be criminal to exclude Star Wars Destiny, without question one of the best Star Wars franchise CCG’s ever produced. It suffered from a rather poor business model and went extinct rather quickly, which was a real bummer, but it remains in my collection and I’m to this day always ready to pull it out and play.
This CCG is quite unique in that it uses dice as part of the card play mechanic and it also makes use of a very tight deck which makes deck building a really light element of the game which is great for beginners. That said, I actually think the nuance of this game is difficult to grasp and many veteran card players felt the luck element of this built in dice mechanic made it a less competitive experience. That might or might not have been true, but to me, competitive is not a reason to or not to play a game, I think as long as the game is fun, that is all the juice it needs. Destinty was certainly that.
I think Fantasy Flight Games should have stuck to their LCG model for this game because one of the things that really killed this game is the fact that you often needed 2-3 cards (with coinciding dice) in order to make a certain card playable, this was especially true about heroe’s so what you ended up with is a lot of cards and dice that you really couldn’t put in a deck and remain reasonably balanced for the general power level of the game. This mixed in with the fact that most of the hero/villain cards where uncommon and rares, made collecting the right cards a pain in the ass and more a frustrating than fun experience.
In the end FFG also had a lot of trouble balancing this game and their were quite a few broken and OP cards as well as a lot of junk cards you would never use for any reason. I’m not sure if the issue was with a lack of testing or what but at the end of the day the game did have a few issues.
Nonetheless, I consider this one of the all-time great CCG’s, just a super fun, tight little game that was very approachable albeit probably one of the most expensive to collect, in particular if you were going for competitive play. These days you can still find it in bargain bins and I say it’s still well worth getting a collection going.
4. Android Netrunner
Netrunner is a unique entry on this list for two reasons. First, it’s the only game on the list that is truly asymmetrical, yet managed to be a well-balanced competitive one on one CCG. I can’t think of any card game in the history of card games that does this, it’s a white elephant in this regard. Secondly, this is the only game in the history of card games that I can think of that died at what I would consider to be the height of its success. Quite literally this game got better and better with each expansion and when it was cancelled they had released what I would consider to be the best expansion ever released for the game. How and why it was discontinued is just a complete mystery to me.
The wonderful thing about Android Netrunner was that it was one of those rare cases in which deck building, while important, was not the defining factor for victory. How you used your cards, how you approached each match and your knowledge of the game had far more impact than the strength of your deck. More importantly, it was about the fairest playing field in a CCG ever put out mainly because, like most Fantasy Flight Games of this era, it was a living card game so everyone was building decks from the same set.
I played this game exclusively with the same opponent for several years online using tabletop simulator so I never actually purchased a single card, but I consider those games to be among the card gaming experiences I ever had.
This is an auto-buy in my book, one of the best card games ever made with some of the best card art ever printed.
3. Game of Thrones The Card Game (2nd Edition)
We are now reaching what I consider to be the creme de la creme of card games. Game of Thrones the card game is without a doubt the king of multiplayer games, one that captures its theme with perfection both mechanically and visually.
I love this game, but like many CCG’s I’m a dabbler rather than a committer, but this is more a result of economic self-preservation than anything else. There are many collectible games out there, I buy into and pay obscene prices for many of them, and at the end of the day you have to make some hard choices, one can’t expect to be able to buy into everything.
That said I have friends who went ape shit and we have more than enough cards in the gaming group for us to have an occasional crack at this one and I consider any such opportunity an absolute pleasure.
This is a fantastic CCG that captures the momentum of the Song of Ice and Fire story, ensuring that characters are at the heart of the game, with thematic powers that result in play resolutions that truly tells a Game of Thrones story.
Of all the games I recommend on this list, this one comes without caveats, even if you are not a Game of Thrones fan, this is such a great card game that even without the appreciation of the theme, this is a great design. Good games like this come along only once in a while and they are not to be missed, this is an auto-buy in my opinion for card lovers.
2. Star Wars Unlimited
Star Wars Unlimited dropped like Thor’s hammer into the CCG scene, stealing the show and proving that there is plenty of fresh ideas and new life left to bring to the genre. This is without question my new love. I never thought anything quite as good as Star Wars Destiny would ever come around again and bring Star Wars to the CCG table top, but I was wrong, Star Wars Unlimited is perfection personified.
As of this writing, only the initial core set for the game has been launched with the first expansion only 24 hours away as of this writing, so it’s hard to predict the game’s future. That said, the first release was absolutely perfect blend of deck building, competitive play and precision design. This game is so good and I know I’m not the only one who thinks so because it is absolutely impossible to purchase unless you pre-order and anything that is in stock in seconds after it drops. It’s that good.
I will never proclaim a Magic The Gathering killer, because I don’t think any such thing will ever come along, but Star Wars Unlimited is objectively a superior game to Magic The Gathering in every measurable way, yet has the same addictive deck-building quality and card interaction that made MTG such a landmark game.
I don’t care who you are if you are not playing Star Wars Unlimited, you are missing out on the single best competitive CCG ever made by a massive margin, there is absolutely nothing in the same league with this game. It’s a modern masterpiece.
1. Lord of the Rings The Living Card Game
I will be the first to admit that Lord of the Rings The Living Card Game is a personal taste thing more than a perfectly designed game. This is my number-one choice, not THE number-one game. That honor goes to Star Wars Unlimited. Still, with that said, I love this game above all others for a single, indisputable reason and that is that it captures Middle Earth with such perfection, such epic scale and so much thematic joy through its gameplay and art that I honestly could not bare to ever put any CCG above this one. It’s not just the perfect CCG, its a perfect game.
Like most Fantasy Flight Games, this is a game from the Living Card Era which I think is perfect for a cooperative deck-building game. For me the reason I love this game so much is that it’s every bit as good playing solo as it is playing in a group. Its perfect with experience CCG players and complete newbies who have never played a card game before. Its scalable with quests that take 15 minutes to epic sagas that take weeks to complete. It has deep, strategic deck-building elements or can be used with default theme decks. In a word, every conceivable gaming situation you have, it has you covered.
Love this game, there is nothing in the world of tabletop gaming I can recommend more than Lord of the Rings the Living Card Game. It’s perfect.
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.
