9 ms·

The best board games of 2016

241 points by kevlar1818 10y ago

jaryd 10y ago
+1 for Terraforming Mars. I enjoy playing it solo as well as with a group. There is enough variety in the cards to keep it fresh and the difficulty ramps up quickly.
- user5994461 10y ago
  What difficulty? The player cannot die or loose.
vogt 10y ago
A lot of great selections here. Terraforming Mars is outstanding.
pessimizer 10y ago
What a dire list. The only game that looks interesting is Imhotep. Just a bunch of branded crap and stuff from celebrity designers that sold a thousand copies before even being released. The re-issue list is equally uninspiring, and they cannot resist adding yet another Rosenberg; one that I don't think was ever out of print for a moment. Schotten Totten is a good reprint, though (of something else that hasn't really been out of print for more than a few moments.) But, come on, Ra gets a reprint and it doesn't get mentioned? Shogun?
- mysterydip 10y ago
  Curious as I'm only a casual boardgamer now, but what would your 2016 list be?
  - pessimizer 10y ago
    Other than the choice of reissues, this might be my 2016 list, too, of what I've encountered. When I said "what a dire list," I probably meant "what a dire year." The problem with year's best lists for board games is that you won't close in on what's best from 2016 until 2019 or 2020. Board games don't easily fit in with the typical revolving year of fashion; they're mathematical/economic constructs with lots of emergent characteristics, and their true values are only discovered over time, unevenly. All you generally get from a "best of the year" list is a "bestsellers of the year" list, which within the long development/marketing/shipping/marketing cycle of game production, boils down to a "preorders of the year" list. I think boardgaming is falling into a cycle where (issued too soon) lists like these are falling into a harmonic cycle with game productions (because of their need to synchronize around yearly major gaming conferences) and informing the qualities to be looked for in next games to go into production. Luck is pushing the industry in a direction that optimizes for marketing and not quality or fun. Boardgaming has always been prone to this. Before hobby boardgaming, it was Christmas and the toy cycle. To get a real best of list, you have to play a large selection of games from this year, and with the vast amount of games issued, you'll have to have that number filtered by lots of people whose opinions you respect before you can have a reasonable expectation that you've touched most of the best games from this year. The only people who do this are the Spiel des Jahres jury. They're going to issue the best quick recommendations, and when their picks are not that fun, it probably means the entire industry was not that fun.
    - BatFastard 10y ago
      He asked for your list of best games, instead you gave a critique of the industry. So of what YOU have played, what do you consider the best?
      - pessimizer 10y ago
        No, I answered the question directly in the first sentence, then gave a critique of "best of the year" lists. I've played a thousand games; are you seriously interested in what I happened to play from this year and I liked, or do you just want to criticize people who criticize best of the year lists for board games and explain why? I don't communicate in product recommendations. edit: Looking at the list above, though, I did forget that Medici got a reprint. It's another of the Knizia auction trilogy with Ra, should always be in print.
      - Fuzzwah 10y ago
        Come back in 2019 and an informed list will be available.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - ydt 10y ago
    Not the OP, but I would have had Arkham Horror: The card game on this list. It came out fairly late and hasn't ended up on many best of 2016s, although Quinns from Shut up and Sit Down had it as his #1 this year. If you have any interest in the LCG format and/or coop games I would check it out.
    - TillE 10y ago
      Yes! The Arkham Horror LCG is one of the very few games (digital or physical) I've been excited to purchase the first day it was available. Pretty simple to play, but lots of fun depth with all the deck building options and campaign progression.
  - splawn 10y ago
    my list (not op) 1. Scythe 2. Pyramid Arcade 3. Hands in the Sea 4. Energy Empires 5. Mechs vs Minions 6. Medici (reprint) 7. Via Nebula 8. Millennium Blades 9. Power Grid: The Card Game 10. Yokohama
  - mck- 10y ago
    7 Wonders: Duel is a great game for 2 people. Simple, yet strategically complex, with varied gameplay.
  - cableshaft 10y ago
    I played a ton of games this year, but most weren't released in 2016. Of those that I played, I'd rank them as: 1. Pyramid Arcade 2. Quadropolis 3. Medici (reprint) 4. World's Fair 1893 5. Eko 6. Animals on Board 7. Control That being said, I own several 2016 games I haven't been able to get to the table yet: Oceanos, 13 Days (Cuban Missile Crisis), Codex, Circular Reasoning, Glux, Santorini, Mechs vs Minions, and Imhotep. All of which I expect could possibly add to or replace something on the above list.
- clavalle 10y ago
  Shogun was the game that introduced me to real board gaming many, many moons ago, but I haven't played Ikusa or the recent reprint. I take it that you like the most recent incarnation?
  - pessimizer 10y ago
    It's an exact reprint:) The quality of what you get in the box is variable, and it shipped very, very late, but that's par for the course with Queen Games. edit: also, not the Shogun I was mentioning, which is the Dirk Henn game https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/20551/shogun https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/20551/shogun which is the same game as Wallenstein, but with a different map.
  - cyberferret 10y ago
    Shogun is one of my absolute favorites, and i still have my original (well worn) set. The perfect combination of luck, strategy and diplomacy IMO. It is a game for those long winter afternoons though, as the average game ive played lasts at least 4 hours (once we went nearly 10 hours). But i would say that over 50% of game time is spent just chatting to the other players about Japanese history and other interesting stuff during play.
- kickscondor 10y ago
  As a devout Ra lover - and of the whole 90s era of euros - I still can't help but feel the irony of your complaint about celebrity designers being shortly followed by a solid Knizia name drop. The current era of board gaming is definitely a move into excess - it reminds me of the cycles we go through in fiction and literature - where we move from the spare, crisp words of Richard Yates or Raymond Carver into the florid excesses of William Vollmann and David Foster Wallace. I don't see a need to demonize excess - it just is one of the extremes of our experience. I didn't quite follow Rosenberg once Caverna was released - it seemed like he had merely translated Farmville into cardboard - a giant stack of little square in-app purchases. However, I think his ambitions are paying off - there _is_ fun to be had in excess. It's just difficult to pull off a tasteful bacchanalia. But his latest feels like a realization of this. Whatever - I do still like Ra more. I am just not going to be disgusted with myself for two hours spent amassing a horde of tiles printed with racks of ribs, pregnant sheep and English crowns for the Norse god of the moment. This was just what we did in 2016.
a_humean 10y ago
I just got Scythe for Christmas. I'm just waiting for people to return from their families after the new year to give this a go!
- busterarm 10y ago
  It's a great game! It's also a DLC for Tabletop Simulator and is very playable there.
- SilasX 10y ago
  I'm a European-style game enthusiast and am gradually warming to it, but it was stressfully complicated the first few times.
gglover 10y ago
Anyone think recent board games are becoming unnecessarily complex and deeply strategy based? It could just be what I've seen from my friends but a lot of the times you can tell from the box art and title alone that you're going to need tiles, tokens, cards a 3 page manual and a practice round before you can even start. For me, that's a slog. It's too hard to hold conversation or focus on anything other than the game. I guess there will always be a divide between people who can spend 3 hours of intense concentration on a Settlers of Catan game and people who just want to play Jenga for a few rounds. Are there any popular simple games in the latter category recently?
- splawn 10y ago
  There are lots of new party games coming out too. Codenames is one that is simple and seems to be getting more and more popular.
  - ygra 10y ago
    Have been playing Codenames yesterday and it's surprisingly fun for a game that essentially just consists of 25 words during gameplay. Exploding Kittens and Love Letter are two other games that are quick to explain and fast to play (and that we play somewhat regularly). Basically, a good list might be Board Game Geek's list of Party games: http://boardgamegeek.com/partygames/browse/boardgame?sort=rank&rankobjecttype=family&rankobjectid=5498 http://boardgamegeek.com/partygames/browse/boardgame?sort=ra...
- internobody 10y ago
  There are a ton of card-based games that are fast and easy to play, without complicated rules, such as Cards Against Humanity, Red Flags. These require minimal explanation and are quite portable but are still fun and social.
- greglindahl 10y ago
  While playing Empires in Arms, a mega-wargame that requires 7 players and 18 months of 1-per-week play to finish, we'd play side games of Nuclear Destruction, which is fluffy card game. Both kinds have always existed.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
freshhawk 10y ago
I'm so happy with this resurgence of intelligent board games. But as a fan I have to say, that board game is not based on Kim Stanley Robinson's trilogy. Because the game is about terraforming mars and not about politics, although there was a minor subplot about mars terraforming going on in the background of those books. Am I taking fucking crazy pills?
syngrog66 10y ago
I believe the best board games are timeless, as with music, books and many movies. I'm not too hip on the latest from the last few years, but ones I'd recommend: Diplomacy. Axis & Allies (some variants more than others). Liberte. Illuminati. Ticket to Ride. ASL (esp SK's by MMP). Carcasonne. Empire Builder. Acquire. Puerto Rico. Dominion. Empire of the Sun. Uno. Fluxx.
- TulliusCicero 10y ago
  You can't tell which ones are timeless until a few years have passed.
  - syngrog66 10y ago
    agreed. reason I shy a way from putting much weight into any recomms about games which came out in last few years. the newbs-think-crackers-are-steak effect. my own list here vary from prob 50+ years ago to 5 years ago. yet still memorable or enjoyed within last year. prob lots more left out
fredleblanc 10y ago
Nice to see The Networks by Gil Hova on this list. I've been working on developing a couple board games for a couple of years now, and at the start of that campaign, I ran into Gil Hova's Bad Medicine on Kickstarter. On a whim, I sent him an email through his website asking for some advice about creating board games, not really expecting much of a response. What I got was a 4-page email of well-thought-through answers to all of my questions, and a bunch of additional pointers furthermore. I met Gil at the Boston Festival of Indie Games in 2015. Super nice guy. I have The Networks in my collection, but haven't got it to the table yet, but I eagerly await my first play-through.
- sandGorgon 10y ago
  Do you have permission to put them on a blog ? Would love to read some of it.
iamsk 10y ago
Too much complex ;)
EtienneK 10y ago
Great list, but it's missing Tyrants of the Underdark [1]. Probably my game of the year. [1] https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/189932/tyrants-underdark https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/189932/tyrants-underdark

241 points by kevlar1818 10y ago

jaryd 10y ago

+1 for Terraforming Mars. I enjoy playing it solo as well as with a group. There is enough variety in the cards to keep it fresh and the difficulty ramps up quickly.

user5994461 10y ago
What difficulty? The player cannot die or loose.

vogt 10y ago

A lot of great selections here. Terraforming Mars is outstanding.

pessimizer 10y ago

What a dire list. The only game that looks interesting is Imhotep. Just a bunch of branded crap and stuff from celebrity designers that sold a thousand copies before even being released. The re-issue list is equally uninspiring, and they cannot resist adding yet another Rosenberg; one that I don't think was ever out of print for a moment. Schotten Totten is a good reprint, though (of something else that hasn't really been out of print for more than a few moments.) But, come on, Ra gets a reprint and it doesn't get mentioned? Shogun?

mysterydip 10y ago
Curious as I'm only a casual boardgamer now, but what would your 2016 list be?
- pessimizer 10y ago
  Other than the choice of reissues, this might be my 2016 list, too, of what I've encountered. When I said "what a dire list," I probably meant "what a dire year." The problem with year's best lists for board games is that you won't close in on what's best from 2016 until 2019 or 2020. Board games don't easily fit in with the typical revolving year of fashion; they're mathematical/economic constructs with lots of emergent characteristics, and their true values are only discovered over time, unevenly. All you generally get from a "best of the year" list is a "bestsellers of the year" list, which within the long development/marketing/shipping/marketing cycle of game production, boils down to a "preorders of the year" list. I think boardgaming is falling into a cycle where (issued too soon) lists like these are falling into a harmonic cycle with game productions (because of their need to synchronize around yearly major gaming conferences) and informing the qualities to be looked for in next games to go into production. Luck is pushing the industry in a direction that optimizes for marketing and not quality or fun. Boardgaming has always been prone to this. Before hobby boardgaming, it was Christmas and the toy cycle. To get a real best of list, you have to play a large selection of games from this year, and with the vast amount of games issued, you'll have to have that number filtered by lots of people whose opinions you respect before you can have a reasonable expectation that you've touched most of the best games from this year. The only people who do this are the Spiel des Jahres jury. They're going to issue the best quick recommendations, and when their picks are not that fun, it probably means the entire industry was not that fun.
  - BatFastard 10y ago
    He asked for your list of best games, instead you gave a critique of the industry. So of what YOU have played, what do you consider the best?
    - pessimizer 10y ago
      No, I answered the question directly in the first sentence, then gave a critique of "best of the year" lists. I've played a thousand games; are you seriously interested in what I happened to play from this year and I liked, or do you just want to criticize people who criticize best of the year lists for board games and explain why? I don't communicate in product recommendations. edit: Looking at the list above, though, I did forget that Medici got a reprint. It's another of the Knizia auction trilogy with Ra, should always be in print.
    - Fuzzwah 10y ago
      Come back in 2019 and an informed list will be available.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- ydt 10y ago
  Not the OP, but I would have had Arkham Horror: The card game on this list. It came out fairly late and hasn't ended up on many best of 2016s, although Quinns from Shut up and Sit Down had it as his #1 this year. If you have any interest in the LCG format and/or coop games I would check it out.
  - TillE 10y ago
    Yes! The Arkham Horror LCG is one of the very few games (digital or physical) I've been excited to purchase the first day it was available. Pretty simple to play, but lots of fun depth with all the deck building options and campaign progression.
- splawn 10y ago
  my list (not op) 1. Scythe 2. Pyramid Arcade 3. Hands in the Sea 4. Energy Empires 5. Mechs vs Minions 6. Medici (reprint) 7. Via Nebula 8. Millennium Blades 9. Power Grid: The Card Game 10. Yokohama
- mck- 10y ago
  7 Wonders: Duel is a great game for 2 people. Simple, yet strategically complex, with varied gameplay.
- cableshaft 10y ago
  I played a ton of games this year, but most weren't released in 2016. Of those that I played, I'd rank them as: 1. Pyramid Arcade 2. Quadropolis 3. Medici (reprint) 4. World's Fair 1893 5. Eko 6. Animals on Board 7. Control That being said, I own several 2016 games I haven't been able to get to the table yet: Oceanos, 13 Days (Cuban Missile Crisis), Codex, Circular Reasoning, Glux, Santorini, Mechs vs Minions, and Imhotep. All of which I expect could possibly add to or replace something on the above list.
clavalle 10y ago
Shogun was the game that introduced me to real board gaming many, many moons ago, but I haven't played Ikusa or the recent reprint. I take it that you like the most recent incarnation?
- pessimizer 10y ago
  It's an exact reprint:) The quality of what you get in the box is variable, and it shipped very, very late, but that's par for the course with Queen Games. edit: also, not the Shogun I was mentioning, which is the Dirk Henn game https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/20551/shogun https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/20551/shogun which is the same game as Wallenstein, but with a different map.
- cyberferret 10y ago
  Shogun is one of my absolute favorites, and i still have my original (well worn) set. The perfect combination of luck, strategy and diplomacy IMO. It is a game for those long winter afternoons though, as the average game ive played lasts at least 4 hours (once we went nearly 10 hours). But i would say that over 50% of game time is spent just chatting to the other players about Japanese history and other interesting stuff during play.
kickscondor 10y ago
As a devout Ra lover - and of the whole 90s era of euros - I still can't help but feel the irony of your complaint about celebrity designers being shortly followed by a solid Knizia name drop. The current era of board gaming is definitely a move into excess - it reminds me of the cycles we go through in fiction and literature - where we move from the spare, crisp words of Richard Yates or Raymond Carver into the florid excesses of William Vollmann and David Foster Wallace. I don't see a need to demonize excess - it just is one of the extremes of our experience. I didn't quite follow Rosenberg once Caverna was released - it seemed like he had merely translated Farmville into cardboard - a giant stack of little square in-app purchases. However, I think his ambitions are paying off - there _is_ fun to be had in excess. It's just difficult to pull off a tasteful bacchanalia. But his latest feels like a realization of this. Whatever - I do still like Ra more. I am just not going to be disgusted with myself for two hours spent amassing a horde of tiles printed with racks of ribs, pregnant sheep and English crowns for the Norse god of the moment. This was just what we did in 2016.

a_humean 10y ago

I just got Scythe for Christmas. I'm just waiting for people to return from their families after the new year to give this a go!

busterarm 10y ago
It's a great game! It's also a DLC for Tabletop Simulator and is very playable there.
SilasX 10y ago
I'm a European-style game enthusiast and am gradually warming to it, but it was stressfully complicated the first few times.

gglover 10y ago

Anyone think recent board games are becoming unnecessarily complex and deeply strategy based? It could just be what I've seen from my friends but a lot of the times you can tell from the box art and title alone that you're going to need tiles, tokens, cards a 3 page manual and a practice round before you can even start. For me, that's a slog. It's too hard to hold conversation or focus on anything other than the game. I guess there will always be a divide between people who can spend 3 hours of intense concentration on a Settlers of Catan game and people who just want to play Jenga for a few rounds. Are there any popular simple games in the latter category recently?

splawn 10y ago
There are lots of new party games coming out too. Codenames is one that is simple and seems to be getting more and more popular.
- ygra 10y ago
  Have been playing Codenames yesterday and it's surprisingly fun for a game that essentially just consists of 25 words during gameplay. Exploding Kittens and Love Letter are two other games that are quick to explain and fast to play (and that we play somewhat regularly). Basically, a good list might be Board Game Geek's list of Party games: http://boardgamegeek.com/partygames/browse/boardgame?sort=rank&rankobjecttype=family&rankobjectid=5498 http://boardgamegeek.com/partygames/browse/boardgame?sort=ra...
internobody 10y ago
There are a ton of card-based games that are fast and easy to play, without complicated rules, such as Cards Against Humanity, Red Flags. These require minimal explanation and are quite portable but are still fun and social.
greglindahl 10y ago
While playing Empires in Arms, a mega-wargame that requires 7 players and 18 months of 1-per-week play to finish, we'd play side games of Nuclear Destruction, which is fluffy card game. Both kinds have always existed.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

freshhawk 10y ago

I'm so happy with this resurgence of intelligent board games. But as a fan I have to say, that board game is not based on Kim Stanley Robinson's trilogy. Because the game is about terraforming mars and not about politics, although there was a minor subplot about mars terraforming going on in the background of those books. Am I taking fucking crazy pills?

syngrog66 10y ago

I believe the best board games are timeless, as with music, books and many movies. I'm not too hip on the latest from the last few years, but ones I'd recommend: Diplomacy. Axis & Allies (some variants more than others). Liberte. Illuminati. Ticket to Ride. ASL (esp SK's by MMP). Carcasonne. Empire Builder. Acquire. Puerto Rico. Dominion. Empire of the Sun. Uno. Fluxx.

TulliusCicero 10y ago
You can't tell which ones are timeless until a few years have passed.
- syngrog66 10y ago
  agreed. reason I shy a way from putting much weight into any recomms about games which came out in last few years. the newbs-think-crackers-are-steak effect. my own list here vary from prob 50+ years ago to 5 years ago. yet still memorable or enjoyed within last year. prob lots more left out

fredleblanc 10y ago

Nice to see The Networks by Gil Hova on this list. I've been working on developing a couple board games for a couple of years now, and at the start of that campaign, I ran into Gil Hova's Bad Medicine on Kickstarter. On a whim, I sent him an email through his website asking for some advice about creating board games, not really expecting much of a response. What I got was a 4-page email of well-thought-through answers to all of my questions, and a bunch of additional pointers furthermore. I met Gil at the Boston Festival of Indie Games in 2015. Super nice guy. I have The Networks in my collection, but haven't got it to the table yet, but I eagerly await my first play-through.

sandGorgon 10y ago
Do you have permission to put them on a blog ? Would love to read some of it.

iamsk 10y ago

Too much complex ;)

EtienneK 10y ago

Great list, but it's missing Tyrants of the Underdark [1]. Probably my game of the year. [1] https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/189932/tyrants-underdark https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/189932/tyrants-underdark