To get home, players will manage the resources available on their ship, confront events spawned in the region, and explore an ever-expanding map. The year is 1929, and you and your crew have been transported to unfamiliar lands by, well, sleeping gods. But with publications like Dicebreaker specifically praising the "careful balance struck between physical impact and digital convenience," it seems that "Descent" warrants its hefty price tag after all. Lean too hard into the virtual experience, though, and some board games can make it hard to justify all those fiddly in-person bits.
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App-assisted gameplay is nothing new for the board game industry - even offline games often generate virtual trackers or generators to help move through the crunchier bits of gameplay. With an average playtime of around 50 hours, you and your party will also squeeze every last drop of value out of the game's hefty $140-plus price tag.īy all accounts, "Descent" is also a triumph of technology. You and your group of brave heroes battle monsters and explore new areas, with the app-based Overlord managing much of the combat and exploration pieces.
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If you are already familiar with the "Descent" series and its unique blend of tabletop mechanics and RPG storytelling then you know what to expect here. Unfortunately for American board game fans, "Streets" has been hit particularly hard by industry supply chain issues - expect to see it on more lists now that North American fulfillment has begun in earnest. That makes it a solid successor to Gaarder's last game, which also received high marks as a family-friendly title. With a community rating of "Medium Light" on BoardGameGeek, "Streets" is a game anyone can pick up and enjoy, regardless of their board game experience. String together related structures or dense populations on the same street, and you might find yourself a sort of benevolent real estate tycoon. Once a row of homes or businesses is enclosed on both ends, the street is scored, and players earn points for the buildings they own. Players take turns placing buildings and meeples on an ever-evolving cityscape. Will the human players protect the ship and chart safe passage back to land? Or will the cultists throw a wrench in their plans, revealing themselves at the worst possible time and sacrificing all passengers to the Deep Ones and their gods? Whatever the outcome, the team behind "Unfathomable" has earned nothing but rave reviews - and maybe, just maybe, found a way to improve upon a modern board game classic.ĭesigned by Haakon Gaarder ("Villagers"), "Streets" is an exercise in urban planning with the kind of bright colors and colorful buildings that would make Richard Scarry proud. Like "Battlestar Galactica," "Unfathomable" promises to test the loyalties of your board game group and ensure that at least one person goes home nursing a grudge.
Thankfully, Fantasy Flight Games has stepped in to fill the void, working alongside Konieczka to create "Unfathomable." Fantasy Flight's new game, set in its popular Arkham Horror universe, is an unapologetic spiritual successor to "Battlestar," trading space for the ocean and Cylons for cultists and placing players aboard the steamship Atlantica.
It may not reflect every good game that came out in 2021, but it should hopefully highlight some of the titles that will endure in the months and years to come.īut as is so often the case with out-of-print titles, the secondary market for "Battlestar Galactica" quickly made it impossible to play. Every board game category had its moment in the sun.Īnd since the board game industry has yet to spawn its version of Rotten Tomatoes - seriously, someone should get on that - the following titles were selected based on a combination of BoardGameGeek scores and independent reviews.
Want to engage in countless evolving campaigns against your friends? Try "Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile" or "Descent: Legends of the Dark." Need something the whole family can enjoy? Break out a copy of "Streets" or "Cascadia" and place people and animals on colorful tiles. So, unless you receive advance review copies or have embarrassingly deep pockets, this may be the first time you hear about a few of the titles on this list.īut none of that should distract from another great year for board games, one that featured a title for everyone, regardless of your preferred style of play. But for board game publishers - an industry dependent upon crowdfunding and limited by global supply chain issues - many titles can slip into circulation unnoticed, even with a regular dose of fulfillment updates available to the masses. In any other industry, the best titles of the year would hit the market with an appropriate amount of fanfare and industry coverage.