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Anthony’s Top 10 Games of 2024

I called 2023 a banner year for “BGA-style” games. I found my new #1 game of all time last year, and eight of the games on my top 10 for the year have since entered my top 100. I have played almost all of those games at least once in the last two months, and would gladly sit down for any of them now.

So I didn’t expect 2024 to come close, but boy did it try. Voidfall is still on a pedestal well above almost anything I’ve played in recent memory, but 2024 had so many brilliant iterations, new versions, and clever spins on old mechanics that captured my attention. It was truly a great year for games.

10. Windmill Valley

When Barcelona released in 2023, it was a breath of fresh air, the first of a series of new euro games with unique, interesting aesthetics that stretched what Board&Dice had been doing for several years with their “T” series. It also marked the introduction of a fantastic new designer in Dani Garcia, whose contributions have been prolific in just two short years. 

The next Board&Dice game from Garcia, Windmill Valley, is another winner, weaving together familiar mechanics like the rondel and the map exploration mechanic, to present a robust if light puzzle of picking and selling tulips. Like Barcelona last year, Windmill Valley lands at number 10 on my list this year, and like last year, a big part of that is simply the volume of competition. This was a hard year in which to rank games, with more than twenty receiving a “buy” rating and seven games making my top 100 for the first time. And that’s not even including some games that have made it onto the list since I wrote what you’re reading now. 

Suffice it to say, Windmill Valley is a fantastic followup, and shows that Garcia has a wealth of fun, engaging ideas to help explore old mechanics in new and fun ways, within themes that are as cozy as they are colorful. 

9. Harmonies

I first heard of Harmonies in mid-summer, when it had just launched and was instantly out of stock everywhere. Oh, a hot new game that no one can find, you say? I’m interested. But I quickly forgot about it, not least because I was told several times, “it’s like Cascadia, you’ll enjoy it.” I have Cascadia. And a handful of other solid puzzly little abstract games. Did I really need another? 

It turns out that, yes, I did need another. Harmonies is a special game for a few reasons. Firstly, it is superbly designed. The core puzzle. Collect two tiles from the market, place them in your personal tableau, and try to complete patterns on scoring cards, is simple to grasp. It makes sense, and it’s a bit easier to wrap your head around than Cascadia, which requires you to always have five scoring mechanisms in mind at any time, rather than however many you choose to pull (no more than three) in Harmonies. 

Beyond that, Harmonies is a beautiful game. Maëva da Silva’s artwork elevates the game by giving it a unique aesthetic that rises above all the other “animals in an abstract” games we’ve seen hit the market since Cascadia won the Spiel in 2022. It’s brilliant, it’s colorful, and it’s easy to teach—the perfect combination. 

8. Arcs

I backed Arcs on Kickstarter sight unseen for two reasons—Root and Pax Pamir Second Edition. Both games had been released by Cole Wehrle, through Leder Games and his own company, Wehrligig Games, in the years before Arcs was announced. I knew right away it was a well-designed, carefully structured game of high interactivity that would require players to think outside of their comfort zone while overlapping themes and ideas that stretch beyond the colorful, cartoony artwork Leder has become known for. 

I expected the game to be good, and was not surprised in the least when it arrived and lived up to those expectations. Is it as good as Root? No, but that’s a bar I wouldn’t set for many games. It’s a bit too complicated, has too many different permutations and layers, and the teach, despite not having the inherent asymmetry baked in, is a bit of a slog. However, by tapping into familiar mechanics in the card management system, area control, and marrying them with a clever press-your-luck approach to scoring objectives, Arcs becomes a brutal, back-stabbing puzzle of a game. 

And that’s without having played the Blighted Reach expansion yet, which by all accounts, elevates the game substantially higher for most people who have played it.

 

7. Sankore: The Pride of Mansa Musa

In the summer of 2020, Osprey Games released a truly hidden gem designed by Fabio Lopiano and with artwork by Ian O’Toole. It was expensive, it didn’t have a big marketing push behind it, and it came out in the heart of the COVID-19 lockdown, meaning a lot of people didn’t have a chance to play it before the hype train moved on. Merv: The Heart of the Silk Road was on my best of list that year because it was a brilliant game, but I still haven’t been able to get it to the table as much. 

Sankore: The Pride of Mansa Musa, Lopiano’s spiritual sequel to Merv, gets the band back together with another high quality Osprey production, Ian O’Toole artwork and a co-designer, Mandela Fernandez-Grandon, to create the heaviest game Osprey and Lopiano each have released yet. The game simulates the development and growth of the fabled 14th-century Timbuktu University, patronized and pushed to grow by the emperor Mansa Musa. It’s a beautiful game, as one would expect with this production team, but it’s also on par with a good Vital Lacerda game when it comes to interlocking systems that feed into each other, forcing players to think holistically and thematically about how the game progresses. 

I still think of the plays I’ve had of this game, and can’t wait to get it to the table again, even if, like any good Lacerda, I’ll need to refresh on the rules. 

6. Star Wars: Unlimited

I’ve been sucked down the CCG rabbit hole a half dozen times in my life. Magic the Gathering got me when I was young, but thankfully so young that there was no chance I could afford any of the cool stuff I wanted (though, I wish I could have, because those cards are worth a new car or two today). I pined over Pokemon cards when they launched as well (same story, should have saved ‘em), and had a nearly complete collection of the first three sets of the Decipher Star Wars CCG (also long gone). 

Once I hit college and realized how hard money was to make and keep, I stopped dipping into CCGs too much, and generally steer clear of them for all the reasons you would imagine. But my son wanted to try out the new Star Wars Unlimited card game at Pax in 2023, and we both fell in love with it. It’s quick, simple, easy to play, and highly customizable in a way that doesn’t require you to spend a fortune (unless you compete, of course). The starter decks were among the best I’d ever played for a new CCG, and they released three sets of them, giving us plenty of permutations in playing the game. 

Star Wars Unlimited is one of my most played games of 2024, and with the exception of a handful of packs purchased for Christmas, we’ve steered clear of the black hole that is collectibility. 

5. Dune War for Arrakis

If you’re sensing a theme in this year’s list, it’s because there is one—the hobby has grown to be sure, but it’s also become something of an ouroboros, eating its own tail in a never ending progression of reskins, remakes, and reimplementations. That’s not inherently a bad thing, of course. Games can be interated on in ways that few other mediums can allow, with relatively low development costs and endless possibilities in the new permutations. 

Which is to say, that I was thrilled when CMON announced a new take on the formula of my favorite game of all time, War of the Ring. Also designed by Marco Maggi and Francesco Nepitello, Dune: War for Arrakis, is a two player (technically four, but we know the truth), epic battle between two distinct factions that play entirely differently. The dice action system is back from the War of the Ring franchise, and there are Character cards with speical abilities that can turn the tide on the map, but so much else feels uniquely inspired by Dune. What could have been a quick retheme and cash-in (see Star Trek Frontiers), is a thoughtful, thematically significant reimagining of War of the Ring, from the Seitches and hidden movement mechanisms of the Fremen to the unpredictability of the sand worm attacks. 

I spent a good chunk of the summer playing this game and have had an absolutely blast with it every time. 

4. SETI: Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence

SETI is the most recent release on this list, just hitting US shores at PAX Unplugged in early December. I played it about a week later, and have since played it a dozen or so times, and I find myself enjoying it more with each play. I seriously considered moving it up even further on this list, but controlled for recency bias a little, and will be able to look back in a few years and adjust as needed. 

What makes SETI so brilliant, all the more impressive from first time designer Tomáš Holek, is that it weaves together its mechanisms in a way that just flows. The game could easily be described as a mess. There’s a lot going on, with multiple boards and tracks and subtracks, and player actions can be broken down into a bevy of different pieces, but at the end of the day, your goal is simple: explore. 

Whether that means sending probes into the deep recesses of the solar system or upgrading technologies to see further into space and collect data rapidly, SETI gamifies and rewards the impulse to find new things in a way that few other euros do this well. Ironically, I compared it to most favorably to another CGE game, Lost Ruins of Arnak, which gave me a similar feeling when it first released in 2020. 

SETI is my most played game on this list of the last month or so, and will likely continue to be a highly enjoyable euro on my shelf for years to come. I may not ever play at four players, but at 1-3, it’s fantastic. 

3. Andromeda’s Edge

I played Dwellings of Eldervale for the first time about three years ago. I put it on my top 100 list that year, somewhere in the 20s. I loved it. A clever, novel spin on worker placement that leads to emergent storytelling, rewards almost every action you take, and introduces fun boss-style battles throughout the game. Rather than “place a worker, get a thing,” the entire structure of the game flows from those worker placements. But the game was never in stock and I never owned a copy. 

Andromeda’s Edge, an upgrade to Eldervale by the designer Luke Laurie, working with his son Maximus, takes what Eldervale did and ramps up to several times over across the board. There are more things to do, more places to go, more mechanics to manage, and a more complex puzzle to balance as you attempt to work your way through the galaxy. That’s all a good thing (though I totally understand anyone who would prefer simplicity). The game is a sprawling space epic that doubles as one of the most fulfilling worker placement games I’ve ever played, a genre I used to adore but that grew old over time. 

Andromeda’s Edge was BGA’s overall game of the year, and was very close on my personal list at the end of the year. 

2. The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle Earth

Talk about a surprise. 7 Wonders Duel came out almost 10 years ago in 2025, making it older than 7 Wonders was when Duel released. The game is a masterpiece, one of the best two player games of all time, and a top 100 game for years. However, there were always a couple of spots that could drag. The 7 Wonders formula in general always had the weight around its ankle that was the blue card strategy. Just getting points, and trying not to lose from Tech/Military, was a great way to play against most opponents, and the expansions, while good, only added nuance to that formula. 

Duel for Middle Earth doesn’t change the core formula. We still draft cards from a layered tableau in the middle of the table (the open information draft that so many games have borrowed from), and there are still multiple paths to victory. But instead of point cards, we now have a map of Middle Earth, and instead of the military track, we have the hunt for the ring, with Frodo and Sam trying to destroy the ring and the Nazgul trying to capture it. The result is a game that feels every bit like 7 Wonders Duel, but adds enough new layers to feel fresh and exciting and to resolve those handful of small issues the original always had. 

While Star Wars Unlimited was up there for plays, it’s Duel for Middle Earth that took the top spot for most players in 2024, and is already on track to be up there for 2025. 

1. Slay the Spire

I like the PC game, Slay the Spire quite a bit. I’ve owned it for years on multiple devices, and have played through countless times. I’ve not defeated the upper echelons of the game, but it’s something I enjoy working my way through over the course of a few days or weeks 2-3 times a year, when I’m feeling like a deck builder that couldn’t be done at the table. Or couldn’t before Slay the Spire the Board Game launched. 

What was a perfect deck building video game somehow became an equally engaging and interesting tabletop game from Contention Games and the design team of Gary Dworetsky, Anthony Giovannetti, and Casey Yano. It shouldn’t have worked. The video game’s numbers are too big, card pool too sprawling, and upgrade paths too algorithmically influenced for the game to be rendered in analog. But they cracked the code, transforming the game into a cooperative experience, scaling back power and damage to make it manageable at the table, and creating a campaign-style system that can be quickly setup and broken down in a way that is satisfying like the video game. 

Everyone I’ve talked to about this game asks if it’s better than the video game. For me, the answer is yes, but technically, it’s an impossible question. Slay the Spire doesn’t fully replicate the video game as much as it captures what it feels like to play the video game, but streamlined and coopified in a way that works at the table. For a game I actively avoided when announced, Slay the Spire knocked me off my feet, and I can’t wait for new content (and maybe even a sequel if they follow the video game’s path!) in the years ahead.

 

 

Next: Episode 511 – Choose Your Table! 4-hour Epic or 4 Light Games?
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