It's been almost 2 years since I last took a long, hard look at our game collection and devised a top 10 list. In that time I've played countless new games, so have my favourites changed all that much? Before we get to the list I want to bring up one honourable mention:
Escape Room: The Game is the first escape room boardgame
I’ve played that *truly* feels like an escape room. The puzzles are perfectly
tooled to be a challenge but not be too hard and should you get stuck the hint system
is well designed to drip feed you help as you need it. That being said it is
only 4 games, not all of which are as good as the first. It’s not that easy to
get in the UK which means we won’t be getting the expansions any time soon.
Whilst there is plenty of quality, there simply isn’t enough quantity for this game to make
the list.
Now onto the Top 10;
Now onto the Top 10;
New to my list, Ravens of Thri Sahashri is a very interesting cooperative
puzzle game for 2. It’s also hard, unbelievably hard! Part of the difficulty
does come from a rule book that doesn’t do a great job of explaining the game.
But once you understand what is going on the game becomes incredibly engaging.
The subtlety that you have to use to feed the other player information is
incredibly satisfying when it works, and equally frustrating when they fail to
notice. Ravens is a game which we will pick up and play constantly for a couple
of days before giving ourselves a break. I think our win rate is currently
around 33%!
New to the list, Takenoko is a game about pandas, the
feeding thereof, and trying to create a bamboo garden. It’s a tile laying game
that has you creating towers of wooden tokens that represent bamboo, you will
need to get points from building specific towers, but also by feeding the
panda. The trick of the game is trying to achieve what you want, while using
the panda to eat down the bamboo that your opponents are trying to grow to slow
them down. Takenoko is adorable in theme, beautiful on the table and a joy to
play, as well as being fairly easy to pick up for new players.
Another new appearance on my list is Wasteland Express Delivery Service - a post apocalyptic pick up
and deliver game for up to 4. We are lucky enough to have a friend who got an
early copy of Wasteland Express and then lent it to us for an extended period.
I’ve never seen a game so elegantly combine theme and gameplay into one
beautiful whole. Every mechanic makes sense and nothing is over-complicated.
There is a heck of a lot going on, but we’ve managed to get a 2 player game out
in 30 mins. I’m very eager to for my own copy to arrive from Pandasaurus Games
and I can easily see it creeping up this list!
Moving up 1 spot from my last top 10, Mysterium is still a
consistently great game. I love being the ghost and rejoicing/despairing in
your friends ability to understand your clues. But that’s not to say I don’t
enjoy being the person who has to decipher how a picture of a rat in a suit is
meant to relate to any of the murder weapons! It works well at all player
counts,especially if people are in the mood to give each other their opinions
on what their cards may mean. It also serves up to 7, which is a surprisingly
convenient number.
Moving down one from last time, Telestrations is a
combination of Pictionary and Chinese whispers for up to 8 players. I cannot
draw to save my life, but that’s okay, because neither can any of my friends.
In fact even my one friend who can draw struggles when presented with a time
limit. Fortunately the worse you are at drawing the more fun you’ll have with
this game. Telestrations is a wonderful party game that always makes the room
laugh out loud. I’m particularly happy that Fi managed to pick up the 12 player
pack while in Canada. The more hilarious drawings and guesses in a round the
better!
Up four places from my last list, Ticket to Ride is
certainly a modern classic at this point. There are so many different versions
that you are spoilt for choice, but I’ve narrowed it down to Germany for the
core game and the UK map for an expansion. Ticket To Ride Germany adds passengers which gives
an alternative thing to aim for, encourages the building of lots of small
routes rather than saving up for the big ones, which in my mind brings some
balance to the game. The UK map is a more complex experience and the one I’d
recommend to play with experienced gamers. My favourite part is the inclusion
of a progression system that allows you to customise the way you play and opens
up new parts of the map.
New to the list Terraforming Mars is a game that took the
world by storm. The premise is simple, you play as a company seeking to
terraform the red planet in order to make it habitable for humans. You will all
work together to increase the oxygen levels, surface temperature and
reintroduce liquid water to the planet. But it’s not a cooperative game, you
will be fighting to control territory on the planet, create industry to make resources
and money and ultimately be the company that has the largest presence on Mars.
Terraforming Mars has a theme that I love, but also has great mechanics to back
it up, I strongly recommend giving it a try, I just wish they had put a bit
more effort into making the game cards a little prettier.
Moving up one place from last year we have Flash Point: Fire
Rescue, a cooperative game where you play as firefighters trying to save people
from a house fire. Flash point has a great set of characters that are all
unique enough to really make an impact on the game. It also has a theme that is
extremely relatable and grounded in reality, yet makes you feel like the hero
that a firefighter is! The game plays incredibly well, with dice rolls
dictating the fire’s spread you can never be certain that you are safe for even
a round.
Staying still at number 2, Pandemic Legacy is a cooperative
campaign game that destroys itself as you play. You only get one play through,
but with 12-24 games honestly I don’t think you can complain about the length
of the game. If you have played pandemic and in any way enjoyed it you have to
try and get a group together to play the legacy version. Pandemic Legacy is
probably the best gaming experience I have had, but since it’s now over (until
season 2) it can’t quite take the top spot.
Still my number 1 after all this time X-Com: The Board Game is a cooperative
game based upon the recent re-imagining of the computer game series. The game is
asymmetric with each playing taking the responsibility of one part of the X-Com
organisation, but you have to work together to have any hope of success. The
genius of X-Com is a real-time app driven phase in which you plan what you are going to do, followed
by a non-real-time phase where you see what actually happened with the troops
you assigned. I can’t recommend X-Com: The Board Game enough, it’s a brilliant co-op game that
keeps you right on your toes all the way through, especially on the harder
difficulties!
Finally I’d like to take a quick look at the the games we’ve
lost from the list, I’ll keep this brief, so here goes:
Imperial Assault has fallen
on the wayside after 2 full campaigns, I do hope to pick up the 2-player mode
again soon, but we simply don’t play it at the moment. Ticket to Ride: Europe
has been replaced with Germany for me, Europe has tunnels which make it more
complex for new players, but also has stations which make it far too easy to
get out of a bind. Forbidden Desert has joined it’s brother Forbidden Island in the pile of Co-ops that we’ve “done”. It’s still a good game, but we’ve
reached a point that replaying it just doesn’t have the joy it once did.
Marvel Dice Masters is still a game that I
love, it’s only just dropped off the list, unfortunately with our collection
growing we can’t play this as much as we used to, there’s only so much time to
play! Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game has always been a tricky one for me,
while I do really enjoy the good games, we’ve now had quite a number of bad
games that just drag on and on, I think we need to do more of the missions and
less of the raw combat games to get the fun back. But the game is simply too
inconsistent for me to be in my top 10.
I haven't heard of the Ravens of Thri. The name alone has me intrigue. Great list and thanks for sharing!
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