So (very) early this morning I posted my video game review list. Here are all the board games I played that were new to me in 2019 and what I thought of them in order of best to worst. (Disclaimer: just because it’s lower on my list didn’t mean I didn’t like it.

1. Res Arcana (2 – 4 players)

My notes merely say “this game is rad as shit”, but maybe you’d like a bit more explanation. In Res Arcana (designed by Race for the Galaxy‘s Tom Lehmann) you’re handed 8 cards with which to build an engine and eventually get to 10 points. A player reaches 10 points by playing cards, collecting resources similar to Magic: The Gathering (MTG)’s 5 colors of mana, and buying “monuments” and “places of power”. When a player reaches those 10 points the game ends and whoever has the most points wins (you can get more than 10). If you like either RftG or MTG, or even if you like both, this game is for you. An expansion is coming out early February and I’m really excited for it.

2. Terraforming Mars Expansions
(1 – 5 players)

This year I got both the Venus Next and Colonies expansions for TM. I also got Turmoil but I haven’t got around to playing it yet. Both of these expansions add new cards and a couple of simple mechanics. Venus adds a new track to give you more opportunities to raise your Terraform Rating as well as a mandatory clock on the game, which I increasingly find my group needs. Colonies adds a new way to collect resources, which I didn’t quite like upon first glance, but after playing with it a few times I really enjoyed, and found it added quite a lot of depth. Along with “blinging” out my copy with some swank 3D printed tiles, TM has solidified itself as a mainstay of my gaming group.

3. Sorcerer City (1 – 6 players)

So I heard about this through a podcast that I ended up not listening to, but the description piqued my interest and when the Kickstarter went up, and I was able to see how it played I knew I would love it. It took a good year, but it finally came this month and I broke it out and played it a few times. It was everything I’d hoped it would be. In Sorcerer City you play as the architect of a magical city that breaks apart and rebuilds itself every year. How you build your city will determine how many points you make and what new things you can add to your city. Mixing deck building (like Dominion) with tile laying (like Galaxy Trucker and Carcassone) this hits a lot of my board gaming boxes. It doesn’t hurt that the components and artwork are just fantastic. This is a wonderful mid-weight game that I’d be happy to pull out at almost any game night.

4. Teotihuacan: City of Gods
(1 – 4 players)

Try saying that title ten times fast! Set in the ancient Aztec city of the same name, Teotihuacan is a euro with roundel-like action selection using dice as workers. During the game you collect resources, build a pyramid in the center of the board (COOL!) and work the peasants to death (yikes!) so that they can ascend to the gods (yay????). It’s ok, the peasants are dice. Slightly problematic theming aside, this is a pretty solid euro game, though there’s definitely room for expansion material (Good news! There’s totally an expansion that I haven’t gotten to play yet!) in the form of new tiles and technologies. I haven’t played this at one player, but I think it probably plays best at four.

5. Wingspan (1 – 5 players)

Originally described to me as Terraforming Mars, but with birds, I knew I’d enjoy this game. I loved the little bird facts on every card, and the components are fun. The game play is simple enough to understand on your first play through, but complex enough that you need a few games to understand all the strategies. I’m really looking forward to another game of this.

6. Shards of Infinity (2 – 4 players)

While I’m not sure that Shards of Infinity brings anything new to the deck-building genre, this is a solid entry, and the game play is really tight. I haven’t gotten to play with the expansion though, and I’d also like to try playing it with higher player counts.

7. Cryptid (3 – 5 players)

This Clue-like deduction game has you, a cryptozoologist (go ahead and look that up), trying to find the habitat of a legendary cryptid. The catch is, each player has their own secret clue to help find the habitat and the first person to figure them all out and find the habitat wins. This game is a lot of fun, and it gets rid of a lot of the problems that Clue has, but whatever you do… DON’T MESS UP YOUR CLUE!

8. 7th Continent (1 – 4 players)

There was a lot of hype around this choose-your-own-adventure style narrative game, and it wasn’t available retail for a while, and then there was late backing that opened up after fulfillment issues, and then they decided to go retail because apparently their FOMO (fear of missing out) tactics didn’t make them as much money as they thought. My objections to Serious Poulp’s marketing decisions aside, I think this is a fantastic game that actually lived up to the hype. One of my best friends and I have been making our way though the first campaign and are having a blast with it. While I do wonder if this is the best medium for this type of story-telling, there is something to be said for a cooperative format that keeps me engaged in a way that a similar point-and-click computer game experience might not.

9. Treasure Mountain (2 – 4 players)

This dwarven mining game combines worker placement (Lords of Waterdeep), tile laying (Carcassone), and worker displacement (the Gallerist), and rolls them all up into a point salad game that’s just a little too long. Don’t get me wrong, this game is really neat, and a lot of the stuff in it is just plain fun, but I’ve had to make some house rules that smooth out some of the edges to make this work for me. For example, everything that has to do with the mine is A-MAZ-ING. From tile laying, to mining out gems, to selling the gems… it all feels fantastic. But might I suggest shortening the game by a whole two rounds as well as not awarding points for beating the dragon? The expansion (came in the Kickstarter) also seems unnecessary. Ignore me if you wanna see your mine get huge though, and you might. I’m happy to have this as the Lords of Waterdeep style worker-placement game in my collection.

10. Dinosaur Island: Totally Liquid
(1 – 5 players)

The expansion to the hit Dinosaur Island adds five (YA FIVE!) new modules for playing. A fifth player (IN PURPLE!), secret end game objectives that both effect only you (called Blue Prints) or effect everybody at the table (PR Goals), aquatic animals with varying stats unlike the previous dinos (fun fact, no dinosaurs were aquatic, but some were semi-aquatic), and unique player powers (you can imagine I said that in a Mr. Plinkett voice. I did). Now having played with all of these things I can tell you that I like all of them except the player powers. Oh. This game was hard to put away before, now it’s hell on earth. That’s why it’s so far down on the list, because the game play is still great.

11. Cockroach Poker (2 – 6 players)

This game is some zany fun. It’s simple. It’s quick. It’s easy to learn and teach. I learned about it from an anime. (Go watch “After School Dice Club” btw. You’ll thank me.) I got a lot of laughs at the table pulling this out at family functions over the past week.

12. Tiny Towns (1 – 6 players)

In this game you make a tiny town using tetriminos, one called resource at a time. I won my first game of this by making a literal ghost town which made me giggle all the way back to my hotel room. In subsequent plays, I found it to occupy a similar head-space to NMBR 9, a game which I own and love, but which means I have no need to own this game. I’d definitely play it again if asked though.

13. Luxor (2 – 4 players)

You know the opening scene of “Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark”? That’s basically Luxor. In Luxor, you play a group of archeologists racing through a pyramid to get the most treasure. The catch is that you can only move using the first or last card in your 5 card hand. I’ve not played a race game before, but I really liked this. I can see why it was nominated for Spiel des Jahres last year.

14. Bargain Quest (2 – 6 players)

This is a fun little drafting game with a cute theme that relies heavily on a lot of adventurer stereo-types. It’s simple enough to teach and learn. You draft a bunch of items to sell to passing adventurers, sell them, and then send said adventurers off to fight a monster. If they win you get more points. If not? Oh well! At least you got their money. Base game needs a little extra variety, but luckily there is a lot of expansion material available! Perhaps the best thing about this game though, is how diverse the characters are. Hopefully more board games will move in this direction.

15. Sailing Towards Osiris (2 – 5 players)

This is a pretty standard dry euro game on a clock. Not much to mention. It was fun, and I enjoyed my play, but I don’t need to own it.

16. Viticulture (2 -6 players)

That was fun. I wish it were about whiskey though.

17. Glen More (2 – 5 players)

Well now, here’s a game that’s nominally about making whisky! Really it’s about making cubes. You make cubes by laying down tiles, which cause all the other tiles adjacent to them trigger or produce (cubes). You use the cubes to buy more tiles or make whisky, or turn them into points. I like tile laying. I like cubes. I like whisky. I like this game.

18. A Fake Artist Goes to New York
(5 – 10 players)

My brother brought this over for Thanksgiving and my daughter LOVED it. In A Fake Artist Goes to New York, the game master decides what everyone is going to draw and tells the group secretly by passing out a word written on a small white board, for example “Judah Maccabee”. Players then take turns drawing (Judah Maccabee) one line at a time until everybody has drawn two lines. Here’s the catch. One person doesn’t know we’re drawing Judah Maccabee. That person is the Fake Artist. At the end, if the fake is found out, everybody (but the fake and the GM) wins. If not, then the fake and GM win. This game works best when everything is going horribly wrong, and you have to be okay with that. You could probably make this game at home, but the retail version does come in a cute little box with cute little white boards and markers.

19. CO2: Second Chance
(1 – 4 players)

Boy, I wish I could get this to the table. I played enough to learn the rules and then haven’t been able to play it again. I have subsequently forgotten all of the rules.

20. Trekking the National Parks
(2 – 5 players)

I didn’t like this game. It’s basically just Ticket to Ride, but slightly more interesting (there are legit some interesting National Parks facts on the cards). If you like TtR, you’ll like this, if you don’t, skip it.