Board game best of lists

Hey all, I thought I'd put up my game best of lists. I'd love to see what you all are doing for best ofs, either here in the thread or a link to your work. No official format!

Mine:

Top 5 Mostly New to Me 2018
1) Spirit Island
2) Pax Renaissance
3) Roll for the Galaxy
4) Root
5) Seal Team Flix

...with Spirit Island so far ahead it isn't even funny.

Gary Sax Annual Shelf Toad "Most Wanted to Play More than I Did"
1) Sidereal Confluence
2) John Company
3) FAB Golan
4) Atlanta and East Great Campaigns of the Civil War two-pack
5) Star Wars Armada

I'll definitely post one, but not until after the new year.

Yeah, no worries, I'm going to be hiking for the New Year so I thought I'd put it out early.

Is this meant to be a 2018 New games Top Five, Top Five games played in 2018, or your all time Top Five ?

southernman wrote: Is this meant to be a 2018 New games Top Five, Top Five games played in 2018, or your all time Top Five ?

Any and all, I think mine is a top 5 new to me 2018. No format implied, I just love reading other people's lists for the year whether they're top 10s, no order, new to me, new games, etc!

Here are 5 games our group has played/requested frequently this past year, and I am pretty sure these either came out in 2018 or were new to us in 2018:

1) Ethnos
2) Wildlands
3) Fantasy Realms
4) Root
5) Inis

Top 5 Games 'New to Me' in 2018:

1. Runebound (Second Edition)
2. Defenders of the Last Stand
3. Space Cadets: Away Missions
4. Secrets of the Lost Tomb
5. Star Wars: Imperial Assault – Legends of the Alliance

Gary, your posts on Spirit Island were a large factor in what led me to order the game! Sounds like a co-op done right, and the last one I’ve played like that is Space Alert. Should be here any day now, can’t wait to try it out! So thanks for the poss, your love has spread the game

Top played games for me this year are probably:

Age of Steam
Terra Mystica
Cosmic Encounter
Mage Knight
Pandemic: Legacy

Legacy was fun, but mostly the stuff between the games. Pandemic itself is somewhat dull. It was a memorable experience, but I’m glad it didn’t overstay it’s welcome. Spirit Island will be the next co-op if choice for the wife and I.

Terra Mystica I’ve taken a complete 180 on. At first I loathed it, but repeat plays have changed my mind to the extent I’d call this the best Euro since Agricola. A dry game, but really interactive and deep.

Age of Steam has been on my list damn near forever, and will likely stay that way. The only time I pull out another economic game is when it’s Imperial or Chicago Express. 18xx games are just too long for us (kids and a new puppy!)

Mage Knight and Cosmic have also been mainstays for years. Te wife and I enjoy Mage Knight, and Cosmic is an easy go-to default for game night.

Lot of ethnos love on this site.

In 2018 I played one game over double the amount of any other game on my list, (barring online plays of Twilight Struggle). Rising Sun. Definitely my game of the year despite having some qualifiers to calling it a favorite. I've logged 21 plays, and still want to play it more. The third season scoring cards stick out as extremely non-fun but necessary choices if you want to win the game.

Yellow & Yangtzee is one of the other 2018 releases I've logged a few plays of. But playing that reminds me of how much more I like Tigris & Euphrates.

Biggest disappointments go to Lords of Hellas & Battle for Rokugan. I had high hopes for Hellas and after the first play the table agreed that Kemet was just more fun. Battle for Rokugan gets a shoutout for leaving me irritated that I spent 90 minutes on it almost 10 times this year. The game masks as a lite Game of Thrones but has so little strategy to make that comparison meaningless.

Food Chain Magnate gets the award for funnest game with a boring theme that I finally tried. Hopefully I get a chance to play it more next year.

I'm surprised and happy at how few 2018 releases I've actually played/enjoyed. Glory to Rome, Study in Emerald, Kemet, Time of Crisis, and Sekigahara are still in my frequent rotation and I'd rather play any of those than most new releases.

Rather than do a top whatever list, here's some superlatives for the year. Are they specifically tailored to talking about the things I want to talk about? No. Maybe. Yes. Shut up.

Most innovative product: Keyforge. This is a no brainer. They fully delivered on the premise and, in a shocking move from FFG, there were barely any production issues. I'm not counting the rude/lewd names in that. Those were great promotional material. Also the game is really good but that's not what this award is for.

Most innovative design: Seal Team Flix. Not shilling for the guys here, this game legit impressed the shit out of me. It got me thinking of dexterity in entirely new ways, which is impressive in and of itself, but the innovations go deeper than just "we put discs in it". Every part of STF was done at least a bit better than its predecessors, if not more. Brilliant stuff here.

Best travel edition: Ticket to Ride NY. I've played this loads with the guys at the office and we're nowhere near done with it. It's the best part of TTR (the last turns where everyone is in everyone's way) on loop from start to finish. Cute as it is mean, short as it is sweet.

Best party game: Pantone: The Game. By all accounts this shouldn't even work, much less be responsible for not one but two of the best gaming sessions I've had all year, but here we are. Pantone is the perfect party game for the geek set. You have no idea how difficult it is to make Samus Aran out of 3 little mono-colored cards, nor how much your table will explode when someone actually makes that guess with no clues.

Best dexterity game: Kung Fu Zoo. This game holds the distinct honor of highest LPS (laughs per second) of the year's releases. Teeeeechnically it existed a couple years ago but only as handmade wooden boards the designer built. It just hit shelves this year and people haven't been talking about it, which is a travesty. Think combat billiards only you flick dice instead and the dice are drunk.

Best conflict of interest: Junk Orbit. I want to sing this game's praises from the rooftops but I can't in any unbiased way. My wife and I tested this game multiple times and loved its movement mechanism, but we had notes. We ended up in the special thanks at the back of the rules which was really nice of Daniel to do, but also meant that I felt too compromised to properly review it. It deserves your attention though. The game isn't particularly heavy mechanically but finding optimal delivery routes really gives your brain a workout.

Biggest disappointment: Shards of Infinity. It isn't even a bad game. It's just a couple of brilliant ideas that were absolutely wasted on a milquetoast head to head deckbuilder that was more interested in being like Star Realms than doing anything fun with said brilliant ideas. Having cards level up with you instead of just having to cull is a great idea that I want someone else to steal and do better.

Best game: Root. I didn't even care about Root until I played it, and I was skeptical after the first game. Over time it proceeded to reveal itself and win my heart to the point where it's become a favorite of more than just the year. There are so many layers to the design and interaction of this game that I can't even begin to go into why it works so well without going on an even longer ramble. Suffice to say the hype and accolades are well and truly deserved. Word on the street is we'll be seeing another expansion in the future. I usually don't care for expansions. I will buy future Root content without hesitation. Play this game, ideally more than once.

There are a few other things that are worthy of note and some new-to-me's that I REALLY like (Zimby Mojo, Condottiere, and The Networks come to mind) but those are the 2018s off the top of my head. Good year by my reckoning.

Knock on wood, I was super busy performing in 5 plays this year so gaming took a back seat for most of the time.

Games I did manage to play and really enjoy were:

Pax Renaissance
Root
Fury of Dracula 3rd edition
Seal Team Flix
Antiquity

Hm. Top 5 (and not) new to me this year...?

Star Trek: Ascendancy- One of the better 4X games I've played in a while; not least because, in typical GF9 style, there are so many nods to the source material tucked away in all the components. I really want to play this more often but, like most 4X games, the time demands make it more difficult.

Blood Rage- I love Eric Lang's designs. Just traded for a copy of Rising Sun, so we'll see how that one works out.

Theseus: the Dark Orbit- I could go on for hours about the potential of this game. Mechanically simple yet incredibly complex once a few cards get installed, I'm still trying to get in a 4-player game just to see how insane it gets. At the moment, I vastly prefer 3-player to the more commonly accepted 2-player games.

Fate of the Elder Gods- It's quick, it's often ferociously competitive, and it's a good blend of tactical forethought and opportunism, both on the board and with your hand of cards.

Spirit Island- We've only played a couple games, but I can already see the appeal that Gary has posted about. There's not much more than I can add that he hasn't already said in the other thread.

Other candidates: Guildhall, Big Trouble In Little China,, Infiltration.

Some misses: Root- In my one play, I really wasn't that impressed and thought that the Vagabond was too much of a free element to allow for balance. Granted, it was just one play.
Keyforge- Maybe I got two substandard decks, but I'm not seeing the brilliance of the design here. Both of mine feel slow and not especially deep in terms of gameplay. If it is just a matter of the power level/synchronicity of your deck, that speaks to a much larger design flaw.
Photosynthesis- I appreciated Matt's review of it, but after three plays, I'm just not interested. It feels tedious.

Dr. Mabuse wrote: Knock on wood, I was super busy performing in 5 plays this year so gaming took a back seat for most of the time.

Games I did manage to play and really enjoy were:

Pax Renaissance
Root
Fury of Dracula 3rd edition
Seal Team Flix
Antiquity

Doc's Back !

I’d really like to give Root a try or six.