Article

Justin’s Highs and Lows for 2024!

January 26, 2025
Justin Bell
25 Min Read
Justin wrote 166 articles last year and logged more than 500 plays. Let’s see where he lands in our traditional Diamond Climber categories, plus a few categories he crafted just for this article!

Another year in the books! Our writing team recently shared an article with our single-favorite games of 2024. However, I played a lot of other games last year…more than 240 different games, in fact!

In the spirit of my roundup of the highs and lows from the games I played in 2022 and 2023, please enjoy a few other awards and my personal top 10 from 2024.

(A note about this article: these winners are based on articles I wrote in 2024, not necessarily games that were released in 2024. Game release dates are pretty fuzzy, between prototypes, crowdfunding pre-production copies, retail releases, second print runs, games that first debuted in another country before I got my hands on them, and/or “deluxified” anniversary versions. Just pretend that everything rated here came out in 2024, because it did…at least, to me.)

With that, let’s jump in, using some of our legacy Diamond Climber award categories and some of my own categories too. Let’s go!!

Favorite Gaming Moment of 2024: Meeting Vital Lacerda and Ian O’Toole, SPIEL 2024

2024 was an amazing year and the quality of games that hit the table was the best year I’ve seen across my four years writing for Meeple Mountain. But the moments I had this year, between playing games, meeting people, and experiencing a couple new-to-me conventions, really added up. None beat the moment when I had the pleasure to chat with both Lacerda and O’Toole at SPIEL 2024, following our coverage of the Eagle-Gryphon Games crowdfunding campaign for Speakeasy. A HUGE thanks to the team at EGG for arranging a few minutes to make it happen!

Honorable mention:

Glorious!

Best Individual Game Component: The Money, Rock Hard: 1977

I played so many deluxified, ultimate, galactic, upgraded, and complete editions of games in 2024 that it would make your head spin. That didn’t matter, because the single-best component I handled this year was the cash included in the retail version of Rock Hard: 1977. If you haven’t played it, do yourself a favor and run out right now…whether you love the game or not, there’s no denying that the money might actually be usable at a real-world US business. (I’m not saying you should try this…but I am saying this money is as real as it gets for a board game!)

Honorable mention:

Favorite Gaming Mechanic: The Action-Cards-As-Cash Hand Management System, Salton Sea

This might have been the toughest category of 2024. Sure, there were plenty of great games, but many of the games that were in that middling score territory had one or two great mechanics while the overall game was saddled with portions that were not interesting.

Take Salton Sea, for example. The game’s hand management values each action card as a $1, $3, or $5 bill. And that money is tight throughout the game, with cards that are as juicy in monetary value as they are valued for their associated action. But you have to spend those cards all game long to survive. I wish Salton Sea handled its stock mechanics better, because that’s a third of the game and that third isn’t very interesting. But the hand management here is the best reason to try Salton Sea and it was the best gaming mechanic I saw in a game all year.

The next ten best game mechanics of 2024:

  1. The Restaurant space, Speakeasy
  2. The Ambition scoring system, Arcs
  3. Leadoff trains, Railways of the Lost Atlas
  4. The Targeting combat mitigation system, Andromeda’s Edge
  5. The rondel, Shipyard (2nd Edition)
  6. Covering other wizards with towers, Wandering Towers
  7. The bidding process, Xylotar
  8. The payment process when erecting a new building, Tower Up
  9. The way astronauts are earned during end-round cleanup from the crater, Shackleton Base: A Journey to the Moon
  10. The action selection mechanism (the way spots are taken by carrying goods, limiting actions), Sand

Most Thematic Gaming Experience: Rock Hard: 1977

I would be lying if I told you that any other game I played this year came close to pushing theme as hard as Rock Hard: 1977. This was the easiest selection on my list…while I had some issues with the game’s design (particularly when playing with core strategy gamers), I had no problem leaning into the thematic implementation of the game’s systems here. If only all board games could be designed by an actual rock star!

Honorable Mention:

Best Dice: The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era

In terms of sheer dice volume alone, The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era is the easy winner here. But the dice are also beautiful, and come in a handsome storage solution that makes sorting all those dice a cinch. I also love a good dice game where I need to handle those dice all the time…and during a single campaign of The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era, you are gonna need to chuck dice dozens of times. Publisher Chip Theory Games clearly knows dice, and it makes sense that they put the best dice I saw in 2024 into my hands so many times.

Honorable Mention:

Best Graphic Design / Iconography: Inventions: Evolution of Ideas

Given the strategic weight of Inventions, it’s incredible that it is relatively (relatively!) easy to teach, thanks to a solid player aid and matching iconography appearing all over the board. (The “action aid” is fantastic, but EGG needed to include two more of them!) The game’s weight makes strategic decisions harder for new players, but in terms of the graphic design here, this is another example of solid work by O’Toole.

Honorable Mention:

The Most Game You Can Play in the Least Amount of Time: Pirates of Maracaibo

Pirates of Maracaibo feels like an epic by the end of each play, when looking at other player tableaus, the state of their massively-upgraded ship, and a treasure board holding a bunch of valuable resources. Even after my first play, I knew that Pirates of Maracaibo would replace the Maracaibo base game in my collection…and it doesn’t hurt that you can play a three-player game of Pirates of Maracaibo in about an hour. A rare win for me in the strangely hot “how do we replace a really long Euro with a two-player or simplified format of the original game?” category, Pirates of Maracaibo is a must if you enjoyed the base game and struggled to get it to the table.

Honorable Mention:

Arcs (Leder Games)

Best First-Player / Active Player Token: The Initiative Token, Arcs

This was a surprisingly weak year for really cool first-player (or active player) tokens, with many games opting out by using tools as simple as a small meeple, cardboard crown token, card, or a tile that read “First Player.” I’m doubly surprised that both the Initiative token as well as the honorable mention items come in the standard version of each game. Seizing the Initiative in Arcs is important, but designer Cole Wehrle and the team at Leder Games made it visually appealing by coming up with a token that looks beautiful on the table and is easy to see from any vantage point.

Honorable Mention:

  • The priority deal token, Railways of the Lost Atlas
  • The dramatically-posed star, Cities
Sand (Devir)

Publisher of the Year (minimum three releases): Devir Games

By the time Rock Hard: 1977 hit the market, this was already a lock for me…in a year where none of Devir’s games hit my personal top 10, Devir has become the model of consistency in the international tabletop marketplace, at a price point that still impresses me every time. Everything that I played from Devir in 2024 was at least solid, sometimes spectacular. I think the in-house development work at Devir is top-notch right now, because the edges are almost always shaved off to offer a clean, interesting gaming experience.

Devir’s 2024 catalog: Sand, Salton Sea, The White Castle: Matcha, Daitoshi, Rock Hard: 1977, Bitoku: Resutoran, Bamboo

Honorable Mention:

Trio (Happy Camper)

Best Rules for Selecting the First Player: Keops (whoever teaches the game goes first)

Frankly, after seeing this in the rules for Keops, I am thinking of making this the rule for every game that tries to use “select the first player randomly” as its rule for choosing. (Publishers: seriously! Let’s work on more creative ways to start a game than just “select the first player randomly”!!) If I use the Keops rule moving forward, I will almost always be the first player since I teach about 200 games a year!

Honorable Mention:

  • Trio (the player who last ate an avocado)
  • Septima (the player who most recently made a mixed drink)
  • Shackleton Base: A Journey to the Moon (the player who last went to space)
  • Rock Hard: 1977 (the player who most recently sang in the shower)
  • Andromeda’s Edge (simulate a combat just like in the game, a great teaching tool for new players)

Best Individual Player Boards: Rock Hard: 1977

2024 was another banner year for the main point of interaction in many of the medium-to-heavy strategy games I tried in 2024. While none of these boards made my skin tingle quite like the player boards from Voidfall—and I played Voidfall again recently just to remind myself of what magic looks and feels like—the boards used in Rock Hard: 1977 elicited near-universal praise from everyone who picked one up. The dials that run up to 11…the slider used when drug use (whoops, “craving level”) spikes…the handsomely oversized central area used to hold each player’s character mat…all of it just feels deluxe. To think that you get all this in the standard retail version of the game is something else.

The next ten best player boards of 2024:

  1. Speakeasy
  2. Tower Up
  3. Inventions: Evolution of Ideas
  4. Raising Robots
  5. Perseverance: Castaway Chronicles–Episode 2
  6. Pampero
  7. Bamboo
  8. Sand
  9. Station to Station
  10. Daitoshi
Arcs (Leder Games)

Best Rulebook: Arcs

Arcs was the hottest game on BGG all year, and for many good reasons. While the game remains divisive across the spectrum of players I know who have tried it, two things remained clear throughout the year: first, the dice are dope (see above), and second, the game’s rulebook and player aids are fantastic teaching tools. I have not wavered on this since I first read the final rulebook for Arcs—it is the finest work of 2024. Not much wasted space, everything is explained in a palatable way, all the edge cases in the game are explained thoroughly, and references to online resources are available within the book if anything really does pop up. This rulebook is a masterclass and puts most of the rulebooks I read last year to shame.

Honorable Mention:

Best Player Aid: SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

This is hard to believe, but now that I have written north of 150 reviews for 2024, I can confirm that not only is the player aid for SETI the best of the year…it’s the best player aid for a medium-to-heavy strategy game I have ever seen. Somehow, it is the perfect guide—all the main rules are there, most of the iconography is defined there, and I have now seen multiple people teach the game to new players by only using the player aid. There is a lot going on in SETI, but the player aid makes the game feel like a much lighter game. Czech Games Edition has figured it all out when it comes to teaching games to players. This player aid is now my gold standard when referencing “best-in-class” player aids in other reviews, from a company that has mastered the definition of a player aid (Lost Ruins of Arnak, Starship Captains, Kutná Hora: The City of Silver).

Honorable Mention:

  • Arcs
  • Inventions: Evolution of Ideas
  • Salton Sea
  • Perseverance: Castaway Chronicles–Episodes 1 & 2
  • Andromeda’s Edge

The Table Presence Award: Andromeda’s Edge (Deluxe Edition)

Much like this game’s source material—Dwellings of Eldervale—Andromeda’s Edge looks incredible on the table. I was always impressed to see big crowds standing around tables at conventions staring at all the extras…the Game Trayz (both the personal player Trayz as well as the big box storage solution), the raider miniatures, the building tokens placed on top of player workers, the deluxe components. And although players have a lot of toys in their respective player areas, it was still relatively easy to tell where things are, between the various tracks, scores, distinct ship model types, a card market, and more. I still think the production needs miniature sound bases so that each raider makes its own cool sound effect—like the deluxe version of Dwellings of Eldervale—but I will lay down my pitchfork for the time being!.

Honorable Mention:

  • Tower Up (the oversized version used at conventions)
  • Septima
  • Speakeasy
  • Cities
  • Flatiron

Best Box Insert: Tower Up

The insert for Tower Up is perfect because it serves two purposes brilliantly: it stores the game when not in use, and it also serves as a combination card display, card discard area, and building block storage area during the game. This system is not perfect—I still can’t figure out why the card discard area doesn’t sit flat/horizontal against the blocks storage area, like the card draw area. But even that still works, and it makes an already quick game faster by making setup and teardown a piece of cake. Tower Up was the only game I played in 2024 that got everything right—gameplay, production, rules, fun factor, playtime. The insert played a big part.

The next ten best box inserts of 2024:

  1. Andromeda’s Edge (Deluxe Edition)
  2. Dead Cells: The Rogue-Lite Board Game
  3. Mercurial
  4. Arcs: The Blighted Reach
  5. Perseverance: Castaway Chronicles–Episodes 1 & 2
  6. Bestiary of Sigillum: Collector’s Edition
  7. Wandering Towers
  8. Inventions: Evolution of Ideas
  9. Avant Carde
  10. Skymines

Most Evocative Box Cover: Xylotar

The artwork for many other game covers was better, but none of them featured a polar bear playing a combination xylophone/guitar instrument with a grin that is best described using profanities we can’t use here on a family tabletop review site. As a game, Xylotar is themeless, so it really didn’t matter what this game used for its cover. That the Bézier Games team went with the polar bear still makes me laugh.

Honorable Mention:

And now, some of the standard-issue best-of winners:

  • Best Card Game: Rebel Princess: Deluxe Edition
  • Best Filler: The Gang
  • Best Roll/Flip and Write Game: Parks: Roll & Hike
  • Best Party Game: Caution Signs
  • Best Dedicated Two-Player Game: Beer & Bread
  • Best Train Game: Railways of the Lost Atlas
  • Best Co-Op Game: Dead Cells: The Rogue-Lite Board Game
  • Best Solo Game: Raising Robots
  • Best Escape Room/Crime/Mystery One-Time-Play Game: Guilty: Houston 2015
  • Best Family Game: Tower Up

The Best Games of 2024

First, a small batch of three Honorable Mentions:

Speakeasy

I’m not including Speakeasy in my top 10 for 2024 because it hasn’t released yet. But the pre-production copy I played was essentially final, and while there are always minor changes to games of this magnitude late in their production cycle (between a crowdfunding campaign, development of any stretch goals, rules refinement, etc.), I think Speakeasy is going to be on my top ten list in 2025. I am so excited to see what the masses think about Speakeasy, a game that I felt was very emblematic of the “classic” Lacerda games such as Kanban EV, Vinhos: Deluxe Edition, and The Gallerist.

Task Team

As I noted in our team-based best-of-2024 write-up, my single play of Task Team is the most fun I had playing a board game all year. But it was highly group dependent—seven other content creators and I ran around like idiots in a convention environment. I love my friends in Chicagoland, but some of the shenanigans we pulled off during my convention play of Task Team are simply not replicable in a normal environment. I’m not sure Task Team would hold up under those standards, so for now, I’m just highlighting here that Task Team was a blast…for me personally, on a particularly fun night, with a particularly perfect set of other people.

The White Castle: Matcha

I don’t consider expansions when building a top 10 list, but The White Castle: Matcha was my favorite expansion from 2024. The White Castle was on my list of the ten best games of 2023, so I didn’t think it needed expansion content. (I was one of the vocal minority who thought “only nine turns” was a good thing.) And after the somewhat disastrous experience I had with The Red Cathedral: Contractors—like the The White Castle, designed by Llama Dice—I was a little scared that the designers behind the original game might botch additional content. I am so happy to report that I was wrong. The White Castle: Matcha somehow nails everything, adds three turns per player, and still keeps the game’s short playtime relatively short. Fans of the base game should run out and pick this up immediately.

And now, the top 10…

10: Pirates of Maracaibo

As noted above, Pirates of Maracaibo killed off the Maracaibo base game, and I haven’t once thought about going back. Gameplay is fast in this new standalone game, the variability is off the charts thanks to the cards-as-the-board setup, combat is quick and easy, and almost everything I liked about the base game is here in a streamlined format. Like other games on this list, I’m excited for expansion content to help me get this back to the table in 2025 and beyond! (Just before this article posted to our site, Pirates of Maracaibo became available on Board Game Arena.)

9: Fateforge: Chronicles of Kaan

Between both Vengeance: Roll & Fight as well as Fateforge: Chronicles of Kaan, it is clear that designer Gordon Calleja deeply understands the connection between dice-driven combat games and the mechanics which work best for people who love video games and operate on a tight schedule. Fateforge is exceptional, and even the base game comes with enough characters and in-game variability to remain a staple in a player’s collection for months, maybe years. I’m so excited to review the expansion, Clash of the Immortals…and maybe even more goodies are on the way!

8: Inventions: Evolution of Ideas

Yep, I agree: the theme is a miss. And maybe more importantly, this game comes on the heels of Vital Lacerda’s most divisive design, Weather Machine. And…I don’t care. Inventions is still strangely flying under the radar—the action selection in this game is some of Lacerda’s best work, on a board that won raves from nearly everyone who saw the game. More than any other strategy game I played in 2024, creativity often won the day during my plays of Inventions…all the actions are there, somewhere, all the time, as long as you can find ways to combo turns and make magic happen. The teach is tough, but the decision space and the downtime (three players is the ideal count) made Inventions one of the great surprises of 2024.

7: The Gang

The recent passing of Kory Heath (one of the designers of The Gang) casts a dark pall over a game that became one of the most popular fillers at game nights in my circles. Heath’s passing is a tragic loss for the tabletop design community. It is also a reason to honor the existence of The Gang and Heath’s contributions to our space. W. Eric Martin wrote a touching “in memoriam” article about Kory, and my favorite part was the mention of one of Kory’s general design philosophies: “Mostly I’m looking for games that are easy to learn, don’t take too long to play, but present lots of juicy decisions.” That’s The Gang. Even players who have never played poker can pick up the rules and make plenty of “juicy decisions” in a game that plays in 15-20 minutes. Heath will be missed, but his co-design work here alongside John Cooper is notable and The Gang proved to be one of my favorite games of 2024.

6: Tower Up

Tower Up was the only game of 2024 where I couldn’t find any holes. Works at all player counts. Easy to teach. Very subtle strategic layers, particularly in the back half of each game when building space gets tight. Exceptionally well balanced, with scores always coming in close. Love the payment system when a new building goes up on the board. Essentially perfect storage solution. Some of my favorite player boards of the year. Played it with an eight-year-old. Played it with 50-year-olds. Fantastic rulebook. The only place I guess I could ding Tower Up is that everyone loved playing it, but players rarely asked to play it again. That means Tower Up is staying in my collection, but it’s not coming out as often as the next five games on this list.

5: Railways of the Lost Atlas

Railways of the Lost Atlas is a revelation, as a fan of the 18xx system first created by Francis Tresham as well as a fan of medium-to-heavy weight Euro-style strategy games. I now use Railways of the Lost Atlas as a gateway-adjacent train game, perfect for weeknight endeavors with both experienced choo-choo fanatics as well as 18xx newbies thanks to its very reasonable playtime. I wish all 18xx games used the leadoff train mechanic featured here, but I also love the other gameplay variants included in the box. Railways feels like a robust system right out of the box, one that can be scaled up or sliced down to the needs of each game night. It doesn’t hurt that said system is gorgeous. I’m very curious to see what designers Kevin Delger and Jacob Schacht bring to the market next.

4: Shackleton Base: A Journey to the Moon

Shackleton Base was my favorite discovery of 2024. Having first seen the game in France six months before it came to market, it was fun to see other players discover the game in the way I did during my first overview. Those who have been down on medium-weight strategy designs, take note—Shackleton Base shakes up traditional Eurogaming systems in a fresh way, with a package that includes maybe the most variability in a Euro I saw last year thanks to the seven included corporations. The game creates real tension during each of its 18 turns. Color me shocked if an expansion doesn’t arrive in the next few months. (Just before press time, Shackleton Base was picked up by Pandasaurus Games for distribution in the US. Go buy it!)

3: Rebel Princess Deluxe Edition

I love Hearts. I love variable player powers. I love games that create the kinds of moments you still talk about, six or eight months after trying a new game. I love game systems that change a single rule without straying into event card territory, where one player might benefit over everyone else. I love shorter games. Xylotar, the next best Bézier Games release of 2024, was #11 on my overall list for the year…so while Xylotar missed the cut by an inch, Rebel Princess became The Game I Didn’t Know I Needed: an updated twist on Hearts that was enjoyed at a three-player count with core gamers, a six-player count with grandparents, and every group in-between. I recommended Rebel Princess as a gift to friends more than any other game from 2024.

2: Andromeda’s Edge (Deluxe Edition)

Dwellings of Eldervale was my #1 game of 2020, so I was tracking Andromeda’s Edge essentially since it was announced…and it did not disappoint. If I could get Andromeda’s Edge to the table more often, this would have been my #1 game of 2024 too, but that’s the only blemish here—Andromeda’s Edge has proven to be difficult to table, thanks to the playtime and the teach for players who have never played Dwellings of Eldervale. I love the new system’s theme, and Targeting fixes my main issue with the combat from Dwellings. There are so many playable factions here that I doubt I will ever play with them all. The deluxe version of this game is ridiculous, in a great way, and the raider miniatures are some of my favorite components ever made. Still…I want my bad guys to make silly sounds!!!

1: Dead Cells: The Rogue-Lite Board Game

At the time of publication, I had completed 18 plays (“runs”) of Dead Cells and I’m pretty sure my kids are lurking outside my office right now, trying to get a 19th play in soon. Scorpion Masqué crushed it with this design. The system feels as close to playing the video game as a board game version could have hoped. The complete package was a joy to discover, the enemies felt just right, and the unlockables system was perfect. THIS is what a loot system should look like, people! I probably need 20-30 more plays to unlock everything, and it’s a game that still hits the table every week, three months after first playing the game. The question I’ve gotten the most? No, you don’t need the deluxe version of the game. The retail version is fantastic. At a player count of exactly three, Dead Cells was the best game of the year.

The Five Most Disappointing Games of 2024

Let’s call this out one more time: 2024 was so great that I only played five games (out of more than 150!!) I would even call below average…in 2023, this list was double in size. 2024 might be my favorite gaming year of them all, friends.

2024 was a fantastic year for games. Thanks to everyone involved in my gaming year, from the designers and publishers who put so many great games into motion, to the manufacturing and distribution partners across the globe for producing lots of quality products and working with shipping partners to get those games into our hands. To those who put in the tireless effort to run conventions, giving us all a chance to play and talk about these games in person, another big thanks for the massive amount of work you put in. For the fellow writers here at Meeple Mountain and to my other peers in the content creation space, it’s been a pleasure creating and expanding relationships with so many other people who love games the same way I do.

And to the game groups I am a part of in the greater Chicagoland area: I couldn’t do any of this without you. Tabletop critique is a tough task, but it might be even tougher to help play games that you don’t always love…so thanks for coming out, week after week, to play so many new-to-you games. It was an adventure for us all, an adventure that I do not take lightly.

One last shout out: to my wife and kids. Thanks for putting up with me as we tabled some of the best and worst games the world has to offer. No matter how the game played, I treasured the time I got to spend with each of you. The best part? Writing so many articles that featured you as the stars of the show. 

Happy gaming in 2025!

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Justin Bell

Love my family, love games, love food, love naps. If you're in Chicago, let's meet up and roll some dice!

1 Comment

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  • My goal is to get and play my first lacerda game this year, in no small part to your influence! Thanks from the west coast, Canada!

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