2023, Year In Review, Day Four, All The Board Games And Then Some!

by Christian Thomas Nonnenbroich

It's time. Time to write that one big-ass post that will probably be my most-thumbed of the year again. Prove me wrong, will ya? But yeah, today, January 13, 2024, I'll finally go over all of the 2023-releases that I played and what I think about them. Last year, I covered 47 games and then some in a post consisting of 8597 words, 52412 characters. I... probably won't beat that today, because there's only 41 2023-releases that I played and I'm probably gonna scrap that whole "Best expansions"-part, because I think I played two and a half expansions that were released in 2023, but... it's nevertheless gonna be a bit long-ish, so have a seat, maybe grab some snacks and drinks, we're gonna be here for a moment. And like every year since time immemorial, we're gonna start out with the...

Best Game Played In 2023

It's Doomtown: Reloaded. It's gonna be pretty much always Doomtown: Reloaded, because it's still the best game of all time and if I play it in a year, I'm gonna pick it. So if it's not the best game I played all year long, I probably haven't played it. Which is what almost happened last year, because I'm lacking a regular opponent once more and so I only played three games of it in 2023. That sucks. Hopefully that'll change in the near future. Maybe I should get into that whole Doomtown Online thing at some point in time...

Worst Game Played In 2023

I don't know why I did it (on a sidenote, I totally know why I did it... to write a scathing "You are wrong"-post about it afterwards), but I played Fluxx in 2023. More than once. Four times to be precise. And it was hell on earth every single time. Fluxx is the worst (excuse for a) game ever made, so yeah, Fluxx was the worst game I played in 2023.

Best New To Me Game Of 2023 (That Wasn't Released In 2023)

I debated this back and forth for a moment, because there were some contenders (like Masters of Mutanite or Spirit Island), but in the end, The Guild of Merchant Explorers took the cake. It's an utterly fantastic little game with some severe playability-issues that should be fixed by a digital version that SOMEBODY SHOULD FINALLY FUCKING DO. Erm... sorry. But yeah, it's true, put this thing on BGA and I'll play it a gazillion times. I'm waiting!

Greatest Comeback Of 2023

I guess this one goes to The Shipwreck Arcana, which hadn't hit the table since 2018, but then got played five times last year. It's not that impressive if you consider that it's a really small game that takes ten to twenty minutes, but yeah, the numbers don't lie, folks.

Greatest Mainstay Of 2023

I'm kind of cheating here, because apparently, I didn't play Clank!: A Deck-Building Adventure a single time in 2022, but... there was a play in 2021 that was so friggin' close to 2022, that I don't care. I've been playing this game constantly since 2017 and I still love it to bits. It's great is what I'm trying to say.

Okay, next one:

Ten Games Released In 2023 That I Haven't Played But I Think Could Potentially Be Good

I actually had a pretty long list of contenders and had to narrow it down to just ten, so... relax, Kirk, Hegemony: Lead Your Class to Victory was number eleven (it absolutely wasn't, but shht, don't tell Kirk). Here they are:

10. Evil Corp.
I don't know if this'll be good, but I have to hope for it, because it has almost the same name as one of the worst games ever made, so I really want it to succeed, to confuse the fuck out of folks going "Evil Corp. is really good. On the other hand, Evil Corp fucking sucks!". If it becomes available here in Germany, I'm probably gonna get it, so if you're interested, watch this space for any news.
9. Majesty of Dragons
I tried my darndest to get D. into playing this each and every time he was over for some reason, but whenever I went "Hey, look, we have to play this now", he was like "We don't HAVE TO" and then we didn't play it. I don't know if it's good. It sounds kind of interesting and has some lovely drawings of dragons in it, because that's what makes designer Juan Arrabal Hernández, a.k.a. Dragolisco, rock-hard, but... I guess we'll maybe find out some day. And yeah, it's a 2023-release, despite what BGG says.
8. Panchayat
Cutting deep here, are we? Panchayat mostly appealed to me, because I think that the cover looks absolutely fantastic. Sometimes I'm shallow. Anyway, I put it on my "Want in trade"-list in January of 2023 and checked whether someone was offering it every now and again. And it was only a couple of days ago that I noticed that you can absolutely order the game from the publisher's homepage and they will send it to Europe. For horrendously high shipping-costs. So I did that and it should arrive at my place at some point in the future, so... yey? It's apparently quite good, say most of the 32 people who rated it, so let's find out together, shall we?
7. Robo Rally
I mostly stumbled across the fact that a new edition of the original RoboRally had been released while I was compiling this list. I had probably heard of it before, but somehow forgotten. But yeah, it ended up as number seven, because I still like RoboRally very much (and have played it twice recently) and while I had completely ignored the 2016-version, I think that maybe it's time to check out that new one and see what has changed. Right? Right.
6. Thunder Road: Vendetta
This one's getting rave reviews everywhere and I did somewhat like the original, so maybe I should check this out at some point in time? Yeah. Maybe. I guess I'll wait a bit, to find out whether there will be a German version, or whether the prices will go up or down. But... yeah, this is on my radar.
5. Dungeons & Dragons: Trials of Tempus
I was pretty close to buying this once already, but then I hesitated, because of the well-documented endgame-problem (there's no reason to beat up the final boss if you're not currently winning and beating up the final boss is the only thing that'll end the game). But yeah, it sounds really intriguing. It does help that I really like the "Forgotten Realms"-flavor, although the price is kind of steep, so... I'll have a look for a cheaper copy and then maybe pounce on it.
4. Unmatched Adventures: Tales to Amaze
Yes, I've somewhat softened my stance on cooperative games over the course of the previous year. Sue me. I generally like the Unmatched-games and do have quite a bit of stuff for them already, so... maybe grabbing this one that apparently seamlessly converts the whole thing into a cooperative game could be a good idea? I mean... worst case, I get a couple more characters for Unmatched.
3. Rats of Wistar
Look, I don't know ANYTHING about the game, except for the fact that it's by some of these very popular Italians that I'm not overly fond of. And it's apparently receiving relatively subdued praise for one of the games from that orbit. I just think that it looks lovely and maybe that's enough for me to buy it when the German version is released. Yes, I am shallow sometimes. Did I already mention that?
2. Apiary
Similar situation to Rats of Wistar above. I know hardly anything about this game (aside from the fact that it's apparently quite good), it looks quite good and I'm probably gonna buy it when the German version is released. Maybe I should investigate further before I make a mistake again? Ah, well, maybe not. It has always worked out thus far.
1. Bantam West
And this one has already been sitting on my shelf for a while, but I haven't managed to fully unbox it and get through the rules, so... it's unplayed up until now. But it looks good and it probably isn't all that complicated, all things considered, but it's just the amount of stuff and the different rulebooks for the different game-modes that kind of deter me a bit. But yeah, I like the theme, so I'm probably gonna bite the bullet and get this thing into "playable order" at some point in the near future and then try my darndest to check it out. Promised.

Okay, with that out of the way, let's get into what I did actually play over the course of 2023 (and a bit of 2024... and a bit of 2022 as well, I guess). Here's the...

Current Top 40 Games Of 2023

40. Kingdoms Rise & Fall: Dorian
What's it with Dutch people and ambitious games that fall flat like you wouldn't believe? We had Martin Looij's Monuments last year (or rather two years ago) and this year it's Bowie Derwort's and Arthur Lampe's Kingdoms Rise & Fall: Dorian this year (or rather last year). They probably meant well when they designed Kingdoms Rise & Fall: Dorian, but at the end of the day, while somewhat playable, this is an absolute mess of outdated design-decisions and just outright weird elements that make the whole thing actively worse. Just play Rise of the Necromancers, folks. It does all that Kingdoms Rise & Fall: Dorian does, but so much better.
39. Rolling Heights
John D. Clair has designed some lovely games. Rolling Heights is not one of them. It's an overlong, not especially fun, haphazardly cobbled together game of near-constant frustration. If you liked parts of it, just play Cubitos (by Clair himself) and Deukalion, they are far better games.
38. After Us
There's an interesting idea at the heart of After Us, namely the deckbuilding coupled with the arranging of the drawn cards in a specific order to get the most out of them. The problem is that this is in service of one of the most boring games I have played in a long time. Also the way it is implemented in After Us deals a huge blow to the playability of the game. It's just incredibly cumbersome and unclear and the game that revolves around it is just too bland to make anything of it. Not terrible but also just not fun.
37. Bazaars of Ubar
Also neither terrible nor fun: Bazaars of Ubar, a well-meant but ultimately hollow mashup of ideas from Tokaido and Century: Spice Road. It has a couple of interesting ideas, but once again, gameplay where too little of interest happens kills the whole thing. Just play Century: Spice Road instead. You get the same out of it in half the time and you felt like you did twice as much.
36. Books of Time
Books of Time is another game with a great gimmick that fails to make anything of it. It's functional, nothing's broken, nothing's inherently bad... but apart from the fact that you have a couple of books in front of you that you can put pages into, there's nothing in this that I haven't seen a gazillion times in other, better games. And the fact that it isn't the quickest game out there and its theme doesn't make a lot of sense keeps me from enjoying it as much as any of them.

35. Dragonkeepers
Looks like we've reached the "nothing particularly wrong with this"-part of the list, because there's also nothing particularly wrong with Dragonkeepers. But when all is said and done, it's also just not an especially interesting game. There's a bit of push-your-luck, some set-collection, some combo-building and all of that works, but there's just nothing here that makes me go "Wow, this is great". Plus scoring is weird and wonky. I'd probably play Splendor over this nine times out of ten (they aren't super-similar but kind of), but yeah, nothing particularly wrong with Dragonkeepers.
34. Skytear Horde
Huh... never wrote an "On the table"-post about it... I would have been quite positive about Skytear Horde after my first play of it, because it seemed to pretty much what Deck of Wonders almost didn't completely fuck up to do, create a card-dueling-style game that is decently playable on one's very own. But then I graduated from that training-wheels-ish game and encountered the same "basically cheating and making things unfairly hard"-bullshit again. It looks nice. Maybe the competitive mode is okay. Haven't tried it. But while it does do some things very well, it became a sluggish and unfun exercise in frustration too quickly once more.
33. STLFNSTOL
Look, I still kind of applaud STLFNSTOL for trying something quite ambitious and also sort of kind of pulling it off in certain regards when you tilt your head like this and squint a little. But in practice, it just requires you to put in so much work to get so little out of it. If someone could basically keep the concept but make it playable, I'd be all over this. But yeah, in this form, it's kinda worthless.
32. Romi Rami
Romi Rami is a decently traditional-ish feeling little card game about drafting cards and completing contracts with them. It's fast, it's easy to grasp, it's generally not unfun... But you know me, I just can't deal with utterly abstract games that are all shapes and numbers, because very rarely do they evoke anything for me. And it's the same with Romi Rami again. If you like abstract, classical feeling card games, though, check it out, it's not bad.
31. Knarr
Competently bland little viking-themed game that does give you a bunch of screws to fiddle around with but ultimately fails to feel involving in any way, shape or form, or leave a lasting impression. Knarr ain't bad, but it's another one of those that just doesn't make me care in the slightest.

30. Cozy Oaks
Man, that stings. I wanted to love Cozy Oaks (not least because I paid quite a bit of money for it), but while there's some really interesting stuff going on here (the skill-upgrading is darn cool), it - like the nice Stardew Valley-esque theme - feels kind of wasted on a relatively boring game that despite its pretty optics doesn't really feel all that evocative in any regard. I hope Peter Jank will take that central mechanism and put it into something more worthwhile, but... this here ain't it.
29. Dawn
The social-deduction-game where you decide whether you want to turn into a badguy. It seems like an interesting idea, I'm still not a hundred percent sure it actually works, though. I don't know if that's as important, though, because when I played this, everybody had a good time, no matter the outcome, because gameplay itself was sorta intriguing. So yeah, this is a relatively rough game altogether, but I do kind of admire its vision, even if I don't know if it came together all that well, and sometimes that's enough. Enough for rank 29 at the very least.
28. Dorfromantik: The Duel
I mean... it's not bad. It requires a huge table, sure, and its relatively relaxed approach doesn't necessarily work all that well when you try to combine that with a duel-type game. But on the other hand, if you disregard that, you can basically have as much fun with it as in a game of regular Dorfromantik: The Board Game, where you're not trying to unlock something. And that game isn't all that bad. I don't know if you noticed, but we're in the "this stuff is okay"-part of this list since... I don't know, STLFNSTOL?
27. Sky Team
Which must mean that Sky Team is fundamentally okay, right? Yeah, yeah it is. Look... I've only played the tutorial-stuff for it yet. I've had a look at the more complicated advanced things, but haven't actually seen them in action yet. I don't know if I want to. There's some intriguing stuff going on in Sky Team, but at the end of the day, the times I played it, it felt a bit too railroad-y and mechanical to me, like something where you're not really free to decide how to tackle the central problem but have to just keep the plates spinning that the game wants you to spin. And it seemed to me like all of the advanced stuff just added more plates to the whole thing. And I'm sure there's people out there who like that. Me? Not so much. As said, it's okay, but it just isn't really my style of game. Good theme, though.
26. Dracula vs Van Helsing
Neat little dueling-game with some interesting mechanisms and good artwork that ultimately felt a bit too... I don't know, floaty and slippery to me. It's one of those games that's probably as easy as nailing a pudding to the wall and I've never succeeded at that either (and not for a lack of trying, believe you me). It works, though, and is able to evoke some fiendish glee every now and again, so there's that.

25. Orion Duel
Orion Duel is an interesting little abstract tile-laying-game that DOES pretend to have a theme, huzzah! Which means that I must like it more than if it didn't do that. Yeah, maybe. Who knows? I'm just spitballing here. But yeah, it's a neat game of always trying to be one step ahead of your opponent while simultaneously almost always being forced to sort of help them, which is interesting. It does get a bit samey quick, though, because with it being so quick and easy and stuff, there's not much to it. Good for a couple of plays, though.
24. Worldbreakers: Advent of the Khanate
It's probably not entirely fair to include this, because I played it twice via TTS in March of 2022, so almost two years ago. And I remember almost nothing about it, except for the fact that I won both games. I do remember that back then, I was put off a bit by the so-so artwork and the relatively narrow breadth of viable strategies (I could identify just two, but then again, I also played the game only twice). So... take all of that with a grain of salt. The game has its fair share of fans, mostly recruited from the Android: Netrunner-community, I understand (although there's also Android: Netrunner-fans who are rather critical of Worldbreakers: Advent of the Khanate) and that wasn't really my kind of jam, so if you liked that, check out Worldbreakers: Advent of the Khanate, I guess. Could be for you.
23. Fliptown
There's some really interesting stuff going on in Fliptown. The action-selection-mechanism is slightly reminiscent of Welcome To... with the addition of a Poker-hand-set-collection-minigame thrown into the mix and apart from that, it's also another one of those "cross off something here and you get something over there which gives you something over here"-combo-cascade flip & writes. And although I do like that and also like the theme, this just somehow didn't really click with me. It felt too involved, yet at the same time too uncontrollable to be really enjoyable to me. Also this wide dry-erase-board with all of the possibilities that you're never gonna fill over the course of a single game somehow caused me quite a bit of anxiety during every game. It's not bad, but... it just keeps me at arm's length.
22. The White Castle
Played this for the first and up until now only time thus far last Monday and it's fine. Not unlike their previous game, The Red Cathedral, designers Isra C. and Shei S. manage to think up quite a few interesting new ways to shake up the dice-drafting and dice-allocation-formula. But all of them are in service of a rather bland game that doesn't seem to allow for a ton of different strategical approaches (says the guy who played it once). It's all very tactical and for a game that basically has no interaction whatsoever, there are some slightly infuriating bursts of sudden chaotic randomness. It felt also a bit long to me, but that could go down with repeated plays. But yeah, all in all, nice that they put a "big" game into a "small" box once more and added some interesting elements on top, but... it'd be better if the whole thing had turned out... better.
21. Trickdraw
And here's a small box in a small box. Trickdraw, the first game set in the weird-west-fantasy-universe of "Saloondria". Yeah, they're still serious about that. In contrast to that universe's name, Trickdraw ain't bad. It's also not mindblowingly great. But if you're looking for a portable game that can be taught in three minutes and played in ten... I'm not sure I know many that are better than Trickdraw. Fäkalini: Klempner & Zauberer maybe? Yeah, maybe. But as said, what Trickdraw sets out to do, it does pretty much perfectly. I am as surprised as you are.

20. Wild Tiled West
And here's another western-themed game. Wow, there were quite a few of those last year. Wild Tiled West is maybe the first non-deckbuilding-game by best designer in the universe (objectively speaking) Paul Dennen. And it's... fine. It's a polyomino-laying game that doesn't do a lot that other games in the genre haven't already done before, apart from adding a weirdly aggravating element of random chance into the mix. And also bandit-murder. It's a solid game that doesn't do anything out of the ordinary, so you might not necessarily want to spend a fortune on this, but if you're into the genre, this one ain't bad either.
19. Kuhfstein
From one games containing cows to another one, centered all around these milk-producing beasts: Kuhfstein might be the latest entry in the "build something and then try to reuse it as much as possible"-genre of board games (already in there: The Builders: Middle Ages, The Builders: Antiquity, Project L and probably one or two more). In it you build up a tableau of different landscapes and try to match cards to it and sometimes take back cows. And it's good. It's a pretty basic game where you do one thing over and over again, but it's relatively quick and looks good on the table. Not one for the ages, but if you're like me and always interested in more games that do something like that, check it out.
18. Dungeons & Dragons: Bedlam in Neverwinter
Look... this is a one-and-done consumable game (meaning that you can't really play it again, not that you destroy it while you're playing it, relax), so me "reviewing" it doesn't make a ton of sense. If you think that "a mixture between an escape-room-game and some light roleplaying-elements set in the D&D-universe" sounds like fun, go for it, it'll take you four to five hours and then that's that. I liked it. The skill-checks and combat were a bit one-note, but they did break up the puzzling. Riddles were mostly easy, but that meant that we were never stuck on anything. And the story is actually quite decent, so if you're like me and are always vicariously embarrassed for the narrative parts of games from the Exit or Deckscape-lines, but nevertheless want some more puzzly stuff than the Adventure Games's "rub everything on everything until progress happens"-shenanigans, check this one out. I thought it was fun and maybe if it does well, there will be sequels.
17. Risk Strike
Risk Strike promises to bring the Risk-feeling to the table, employing only cards and dice and lasting for twenty minutes. And for better or worse, it does (almost) exactly that. So whether you'll like it probably hinges on whether you absolutely abhor everything that is even slightly Risk-esque or whether you think that there's some merit to Risk, but that the original thing is just pretty much unplayable in this day and age. I fall into the latter category and I enjoy Risk Strike for now. It's not perfect, but it does exactly what it sets out to do.
16. The Brain
Gah! A cooperative game! Burn it with fire! What? We already had one of those in the form of Sky Team? Oh, okay. Then never mind. The Brain probably tries to piggyback off of the success of stuff like The Mind, but the only things they have in common are the fact that they are cooperative games with communication limits where you have to get rid of cards and that they have similar names. The Brain is all about playing cards to a central display in the most efficient way possible without knowing exactly what your fellow players have in hand and also without talking about anything. It's interesting. A bit one-note in the long run and kind of pedestrian in comparison to The Mind's lofty psychological ambitions, for example, but probably just more playable because of that. It probably won't dominate the conversation for years to come, but it's good for a play or five.

15. GOLDblivion
And we're returning to shitty names with GOLDblivion, the third game by Goblivion Games after Goblivion and Dinoblivion. Glad they found their niche. Their niche being slightly wonky deckbuilders. GOLDblivion is a slightly wonky deckbuilder where you construct two decks at once, both of them being somewhat self-cleaning, and you try to amass gold by going out to conquer lands or maybe just combo cards into one another real good. The game's quite rough around the edges in certain regards, the balance might be off (it's quite hard to counter a well-implemented "all-in on elves"-strategy) and not all of the super-quirky ideas Jean-François Gauthier has put into the game pay off like he probably wanted them to. But I nevertheless find the game charming enough to have played it 28 times already, so there's gotta be something about it, eh?
14. Moon
Moon on the other hand I only played once. Because I don't own it. I'm still debating whether I should own it. Well, with a bit of luck, it'll appear on BGA at some point in time and then I can play it some more. I liked my one play of it. It ran a bit long, thanks to the fact that it's probably the first closed drafting game that I have played without simultaneously revealing and playing cards, but it's nevertheless interesting, quite involved engine-build-y stuff that lets you do cool things like clockwork. I didn't like Villagers very much, but with Streets and Moon, designer Haakon Gaarder did good, if you asked me.
13. Forest Shuffle
This one got hyped quite a bit around its Essen-release. And yeah, it ain't half bad. I'm not as convinced by it as many other folks seem to be, because a) the theme is a bit shit (although the fact that you basically glue animals to trees all game long and stack rabbits every now and again is funny), b) I imagine it to be an absolute nightmare with more than two people and also when played physically (all of my 35 plays of this have been via BGA and with two players only) and c) at the end of the day, it can be frustratingly random where the makeup of the deck can make or break your strategy and also where a timely or untimely draw of the final winter-card can arbitrarily choose which player wins. But it is a pretty absorbing game that doesn't outstay its welcome and when you get into the groove and your strategy pans out, that's quite satisfying. So yeah, not bad.
12. 3 Ring Circus
Granted, I might "overrate" the whole thing because I like the theme and the look of the game quite a bit, but yeah, I think 3 Ring Circus is a decently fun game. I've talked at length about it just yesterday, so I hope you excuse me not feeling like reiterating everything I said then again. Just read that post if you're interested in it.
11. The Vale of Eternity
This one keeps giving me a headache. I played it once against E. in December and then didn't get it back to the table for a while, until I played it a second time five days ago... And then the next day, the Beta dropped on BGA and I've played it 19 times that way since. And... I'm still torn. There's a lot of cool stuff going on here, but in between games that really slog along early on, because only high-cost-cards that don't help anybody yet come out and games that feel like they are decided by pure chance, because the perfect card came out of the deck when that person was starting-player, I am really more frustrated by the whole thing than I wish I was. Then again, it made me play it 19 times over the course of four days, so... that's something, right? Maybe five games down the line, I'll finally fully fall in love with it. Or maybe five games down the line, I'll have had my fill thanks to the grievances I have. Or maybe something in the middle will happen. We'll see. For now... number eleven.

10. Ancient Knowledge
We're starting out the Top Ten kind of similar like we've left the previous decade, because there's some similarities between Ancient Knowledge and The Vale of Eternity. Both are about card-combo-building where you trigger a bunch of your effects at the end of each turn and while I physically own both of them, I've played both of them more via BoardGameArena. And I do have some similar problems with Ancient Knowledge as I have with The Vale of Eternity. Sometimes things just don't work out at random. Or they do work out relatively randomly. Sometimes your starting-hand of ten cards contains not a single worthwhile card to start the game with, so the early game drags. And none of the cards in the game are super-interesting. But the way you use them is. The way you place cards on your timeline and then use their powers so often, or have that many turns to get rid of all of the knowledge-tokens which will otherwise turn into negative points... This is pretty cool. The theme is whatever and even if you do your darndest to play the game as a race and end it quickly, it can sometimes run a bit long, but... it's nevertheless pretty friggin' intriguing, so that's good, if you asked me.
9. Deadly Dowagers
I don't actually know how much of the theme has colored my enjoyment of the game, because yeah, Deadly Dowagers isn't great. But I have enjoyed each and every play of it immensely. The drafting is quick and satisfying, the comboing is neat and the theme about murdering your husbands for fun and profit is always a hoot. Plus it's a really quick game in general and comes in an appropriately sized box, so that's good. I wonder whether I'd want an expansion for this. On the one hand, I'd like for the game to be a bit less basic and more involved. On the other hand, that would probably also make it longer and it comes in at just the right amount of time. I don't know, if there ever will be one, I'll surely have a look at it, but even if there won't be one, I'm still happy to have this weird game where you can strangle your husband if you don't have the right card to murder him with on my shelf.
8. Faraway
And another drafting-game I don't own. In contrast to Moon, I haven't played this only once thus far, though. I've played Faraway 59 times at time of writing. Why wouldn't I? A two-player-game of this via BGA takes six minutes or so. It's that quick. But it's not just quick, it's also quite fun. I tend to like drafting-games where you have an actual hand of cards à la Greed or Deadly Dowagers, where you get a constant influx of new stuff but can plan around the order in which you'll play them and hold something back for later (or for never at all) and Faraway is all about that. It is a bit random. Sometimes things just don't work out. Sometimes I score less than fifty points and sometimes more than a hundred and I can't really tell you what I did differently, except for maybe gotten the right cards instead of the wrong ones. But since it's so quick, that doesn't matter all that much. I'll probably try to get a physical copy of this when it becomes available for an adequate price here in Germany, because while not my favorite game of the year 2023, it's just super-playable.
7. Mycelia
A game by Ravensburger? What's the world coming to? But yeah, Mycelia is an excellent little introductory-level deckbuilder that transcends that humble description by tacking an incredibly intriguing spatial puzzle onto that mechanism. It's basically a deckbuilding-version of Upkeep with a less idiosyncratic theme but more solid mechanisms and I really like it. I also suck at it quite badly. Doesn't matter that much, though, there's just something about efficiently clearing your board of dew-drops that keeps me coming back. It's also really affordable from a financial point of view, so there's basically no reason why you shouldn't own Mycelia!
6. Maul Peak
Yes, I've finally played it. And it's good. Maybe even great. Maybe I'm undervaluing it here, because it is the sequel to Skulk Hollow and therefore a lot like it and while I liked Skulk Hollow, that closeness does make it a bit less groundbreaking to me. Although to be fair, it's also different enough. I think I like the Grizzar more than the Foxen, because they are less squishy and have more personality. I've only played with the easiest of the guardians yet and I don't think he is very good, because that "freezing and trapping"-mechanism? That's just mean and incredibly devastating to the Grizzar. But yeah, it looks fantastic once more, it plays quickly and easily, I haven't noticed any balance-issues yet (two games in, both sides won once) and I'm kind of looking forward to trying a four-player-game of this, combined with Skulk Hollow. So yeah, good stuff.

5. Maple Valley
And another one featuring anthropomorphic animals, the delightful Maple Valley is the quasi-deckbuilding-sequel (more handbuilding, really) to Creature Comforts and everybody who played Creature Comforts will feel right at home here, because the games are on the one hand decently similar, on the other hand different enough to warrant having both. You're basically trying to do more or less the same thing as in Creature Comforts, only with a new mechanism at the heart of the game. And it's good. The fact that you have a little player-piece that you're moving around the board makes this feel more adventurous and rollicking, so that's something I like. No complaints here, this is an incredibly charming game that I enjoy a lot.
4. Waypoints
Speaking of "rollicking" and "adventurous", Waypoints is that as well. A bit. I liked the previous efforts by Matthew Dunstan and Rory Muldoon under the Postmark Games imprint, but this one is the first one that I find truly excellent. It's so easy and obvious from a conceptual point of view, but its flexibility and general flair still blows my mind. There's just one shared die-roll and then folks draw a line to their next waypoint and that's it, but it truly feels like you're exploring something, making way, progressing. It's a great game and you should absolutely go to Postmark Games's website and secure yourself a print & play copy, even if you're usually not into stuff like that. This is absolutely worth it.
3. Primordial Secrets
You know I'm all about weird and wonky, grotesque indie publications and that's exactly what Primordial Secrets is. A kind of esoteric deckbuilding-game, slightly reminiscent of Lucky's Misadventures: Episode 42 – Lost in Oddtopia but different enough to stand on its own, with a really strange theme and some truly bizarre designs on the cards. I still don't really know whether it actually works with any number of players beside three and I also haven't played it nearly as often as I wanted to with that number. But yeah, even if there might be games with more solid rules and stuff out there, I simply admire Primordial Secrets's audacity and vision and just utter unique weirdness. Check it out. It's something.
2. Expeditions
It kind of feels like Jamey Stegmaier could only lose by publishing this sequel to his most beloved game Scythe, which is simultaneously not really that similar to Scythe but on the other hand sort of contains all of the elements you should already know from its older sibling, just broken up, rearranged and tacked onto new mechanisms. Me personally? I love Scythe, but I also like Expeditions quite a bit. There are things in it that I think are even superior to Scythe, like the more involved, more creative, more individual action-selection-framework, or the fact that "half-completed" goals aren't an utter waste of time, like they are in Scythe. There are things that I think are inferior, like the way the game scales or the additional randomness. All in all, I like it a lot, though. It won't ever replace Scythe for me, but it's nevertheless a strong similar-yet-different alternative that is worth experiencing.
1. Distilled
But yeah, my favorite game of the year is still Distilled. I was completely uninterested in it in the beginning, despite the glowing reviews and hype and stuff. But then I played it (sort of reluctantly)... And I did fall in love with it a bit. It's such a weird mixture of well-known concepts that nevertheless come together in such a way that they feel fresh and unique. It's just solid through and through, with moments of brilliance sprinkled into it for good measure. And while the theme isn't necessarily one I'm super-fond of, the way it is implemented makes the whole thing feel weighty and substantial, while the whole thing itself is still light enough to not be a slog to teach and play. It's great and I'm looking forward to receiving the expansion quite soon.

Okay, now that that's done... here's...

A Couple Of Words Regarding 2023 Expansions

Yeah, I'm not gonna do a full rundown of stuff, because some of the highest profile expansions that I received, I haven't played it. Haven't played Cthulhu Wars with the new factions. Haven't played Castles of Mad King Ludwig with the new expansion, still haven't received Rise of the Necromancers: Undead Sea, but there's always next year, right? So what did I play? Well... I played the Distilled: Africa & Middle East Expansion and it's good. Mostly more stuff, but also some elusive double-ingredients, which is nice. As said, I'm probably gonna get my own copy of it relatively soon, that'll be exciting. I also played Claim: Alliances, which kind of does for Claim what Unmatched Adventures: Tales to Amaze does for Unmatched, surprisingly turning it into a cooperative game without fiddling around much with the rest of the game. I like it quite a bit. Scott Almes did good for once, what times we live in. And finally, there's of course Doomtown: Weird West Edition. I used some of that when I played my three games of Doomtown: Reloaded earlier this year and it was fantastic, but that was to be expected, right? So yeah, if I had to call something the "Best Expansion Of 2023" (although it isn't really one, it's a new core-box), it'd be Doomtown: Weird West Edition. Because reasons.

Soooooo... that's also done now, right? Well... No way to delay this any further? Ho boy, here we go. Let's talk about the...

Worst Game Of 2023

It's Earth. I thought about doing a long, verbose explanation, but that came across as pretty defensive and I don't feel like doing that on my blog. Look, this isn't objective, this is just my opinion and I understand that the game has many fans and won a lot of awards and shit and a lot of people think that it's the best game of the year and these are probably fine folks and I don't think they are stupid or wrong or whatever. But I just loathe this fucking game. It exemplifies everything that I think is wrong about the modern board game industry, to the point where it almost comes across as a parody of stuff like Wingspan or Ark Nova. It has the blandest theme imaginable and then does absolutely nothing with it, it throws all of these things at the player and none of them evoke anything, it's such an uninteresting cascade of just stuff on top of stuff on top of more stuff that loses all sense of meaning five minutes into the whole thing. There's zero tension, zero interesting decisions, zero reasons to care about anything that goes on in this maelstrom of meaninglessness and then it also goes on for far too long. I played it again very recently after nine months of not playing it, wondering whether my reaction earlier in 2023 had been wrong and I had just had a bad day or something like that. And it was worse than I remembered it. If you like it, that's great. Doesn't change the fact that for me, Earth is easily the worst game of 2023.

And yeah, that's it. That's the big "All the board games"-post of this year's "Year In Review". Two posts remaining, one looking ahead at 2024 and then the other one about the other stuff that didn't fit in anywhere else. These will probably be released on Monday and on Wednesday, but... things might change, because... you know, these things take time and sometimes I don't have much of that. Like this Teddy Bear, who's also short on time:

Great. Anyway, I'm gonna go eat something now and then make some banana pancakes. You leave a thumb and have a fantastic Saturday, that'd be great, eh? See you tomorrow!