These are the games that stand out, stand up, and won’t stand aside. Maybe it’s a light card game, or maybe it’s an hours-long space odyssey, the games on this list are our collective favorites that we played in 2024. Please join our team as we celebrate the best that board gaming has to offer.
Tom Franklin
Expeditions
2024 started with Expeditions, the sequel-of-sorts to Scythe. While the game uses similar iconography, that’s about the only thing Expeditions shares with Scythe.
While trying to outscore your opponents, you’ll be exploring new parts of the landscape, defeating the mysterious Corruption that has spread, collecting and using cards—and workers to activate them—to take specific actions. Your turn actions will be governed by a trio of options, only two of which you can take at a time.
In my review back in February I said Expeditions was an early contender for my favorite game of the year. My group played it again last month, and I found I still liked the challenges the game presents. However, there’s a game I found that I liked even better…
Spicy
It turns out I’m a big fan of bluffing games. This came as a surprise, as I hadn’t considered the gaming genre before playing Cockroach Poker Royale. Then I tried Skull. (And compared the two in this Article.)
And then I found Spicy.
Spicy is a card game that features three suits/spices: red chili peppers, black peppercorns, and green wasabi. Each suit has numbers 1-10. To keep things interesting, there are also a few cards that become any number (but have no suit) or become any suit (but are numberless).
On a turn, players play a card from their hand facedown and declare both the suit and number. At the start of a round, that card must be a 1, 2, or a 3 of a chosen suit. After that, the suit stays the same, but the value must go higher. After it crests 10, the suit remains intact, but the number must again be a 1, 2, or 3. This continues until someone suspects a just-played card is not what the player stated. The challenged card is then revealed. If the challenger is correct and the card was not the one stated, they collect all the played cards in the pile and the bluffing player draws three cards from the deck. If the challenger is wrong, the opposite occurs.
Since introducing my weekly group to the game, Spicy has filled any session that ends with an extra 10-15 minutes left to play. It’s just that much fun.
David Wood
Andromeda’s Edge
A reimplementation of the highly successful Dwellings of Eldervale, Andromeda’s Edge is a sci-fi game of galactic exploration, area control, and combat.
Each faction begins with a limited number of ships that they launch onto the board to collect resources and take actions. But beware; if you enter a sector within range of raiders, they and other factions within range will fight you for control. Players can purchase modules that will generate resources when they return their ships to their station. Building developments, acquiring new ships and upgrades, and advancing on progress tracks will help your faction to expand your influence and accumulate victory points.
Andromeda’s Edge is a stunning production, with high quality components. Turns are quick, yet meaningful with loads of player interaction. This is not only the best game I played in 2024, but my favorite 4X game ever.
David McMillan
Civolution
Earlier this year, I was lucky enough to get my hands on a copy of Civolution, the newest game from Stefan Feld (and his first non-Queen Games collaboration in years). This game is marvelous, giving me all of the things that I love about Feld designs and more: tight decision spaces, clever mechanisms, dice rolling, and plenty of luck mitigation.
Civolution is an action selection game played with dice. On a player’s turn, they’re going to select two of their dice and pair them up to take one of the game’s many different actions in an effort to score the most points before the game ends. Anybody who has ever played The Castles of Burgundy, enjoyed it, but wished it were a bit crunchier is going to feel right at home here.
The initial learning curve is a bit steep, but you’ll quickly settle in after a few turns. Then the game really opens. I’ve played this game over ten times since I first ripped the shrinkwrap off a month ago, and I can’t get enough.
Abram Towle
Mistwind
During Gen Con this year, a friend in my group brought along a copy of Mistwind, a game I had heard some buzz about on the vendor hall floor the previous year. A year ago I didn’t give it much thought—flying delivery whales didn’t peak my interest. But as we sat around the table at Lucas Oil Stadium, moving our flying whale miniatures around to fulfill delivery contracts of medicine and cotton—or toilet paper as we asked it—I found myself enraptured by this beautiful game.
The production quality is in a league all its own, from the individual player box inserts to the clay action discs. You know, the ones that resemble high roller poker chips that let out a satisfying clack? We quickly began littering the board with our lighthouse markers, expanding our delivery networks, and working towards the objectives.
Mistwind benefits from one of my favorite bits of “suffering” in gaming—every turn there is more that you want to do than you can do. Plus you have to anticipate what actions the other players might spend their discs on, often taking risks that another desirable space will wheel its way to you. It’s a gorgeous experience wrought with meaningful decisions and intuitive gameplay that reminded me that making judgements on a game without seeing or playing it is simply irrational. And that I love the word krill.
Bob Pazehoski, Jr.
Glow
The appeal of Glow was, at the first introduction, purely aesthetic. To be honest, I’m still wholly enamored with the pen and ink illustration style, the quirky creatures, and the colorful pop of the icons and dice. The gameplay is ridiculously simple and obviously riddled with inconsistency and chance—what can you expect from so large a bag of dice? But Glow is the one game that entered the house in 2024 that I’ve yet to turn away.
I’ve been in a season of limited tabletop time, which has forced me to really evaluate every opportunity to sit with a game. Glow sits in that sweet spot where it doesn’t take all that long and the little gray cells are only sporadically taxed. I don’t even mind the fact that the map movement—arguably a key component of the game—isn’t all that challenging. I reach the end with relative ease, but it doesn’t make me feel like I’ve tapped the game out. Instead I think of It like my morning walk to work. Sometimes I take different side roads, but I always reach the intended destination. In fact, that might just be how I describe the game. It takes me where I want to go.
Ultimately, Glow arrived at the right time and has become my preferred game during this season of life. The young kiddos enjoy it, which always helps. Folks indulge me with it, and for that I’m thankful.
Nana/Trio
The most played game in our home in 2024 is, without a doubt, Nana (also known as Trio). We play a minimum of three games every time we slip off the box lid. My youngest asks to play every day. Every. Day. She has done so since the game arrived earlier this year.
I just keep describing Nana as Go Fish meets Memory. For a hobby whose entryway can be so intimidating, Nana is the sort of game that breaks down barriers. The mechanisms are simple, but they suggest that some of the principles we’ve all known for several decades can be combined and massaged to create more unique and satisfying experiences. I’m not a fan of either game I mentioned in describing Nana. But the mere mention of something so familiar makes this a great game for hesitant grandparents and awkward aunties, a game that spans generations and unites families around the table. I love it, and I’ve probably introduced it to more people than I can count on fingers and toes without one word of regret.
When “could you show me your highest card?” is the most difficult question to answer, what’s not to celebrate? I can’t wait until my daughter asks tomorrow to play.
Andy Matthews
World Wonders
I love tile-laying games. There’s something about the spatial aspects that make them very satisfying to my analytically driven mind. Half game, half optimization puzzle they check off boxes for me, especially when there’s arrangement based objectives. Enter World Wonders, from Arcane Wonders.
On the surface World Wonders is a civ-building game. Over the course of ten or so rounds players draft tiles, place roads, increase various civilization stats (culture, engineering, population, etc.), and most importantly place monuments (“wonders”). These monuments give the game immense table presence thanks to the publishers efforts on crafting these unique wooden pieces. Some of these are the result of multiple pieces glued together and painted, and are easily some of the coolest components I’ve ever seen in board gaming. And while the pieces certainly take center stage, the gameplay itself is also strategic and quite satisfying.
World Wonders has what we at Meeple Mountain call “Builders Satisfaction”; a term we coined that represents the feeling you get when you finish a game whose final board state is unique and will never be repeated. The arrangement of the city tiles, the roads, and the monuments are distinctly yours, whether you won or not—and that is Builders Satisfaction.
Andrew Holmes
Unmatched: Slings and Arrows
Other members of the Meeple Mountain team are fairly cool on the Unmatched system. Their reviews paint a picture of average or slightly above average competency whilst talking about the limitations of the system and the ‘better’ options that exist for those looking for miniature-based tabletop combat.
I’m sure they’re right. But not for me.
I don’t particularly enjoy competitive fighting games. Never have. Not digitally on the old Megadrive and PlayStation, or in analogue form on the table. They’re just not my jam. Each to their own and all that.
Unmatched is the fighting game for people like me. Elegant, quick and dynamic, it has moments of excitement, moments that make you feel smart and moments where you feel like the biggest fool in the room. And the cards are unfailingly beautiful. I’ve been building a bit of a literature-themed collection of Unmatched so the Shakespearean Slings and Arrows is a great fit for me, with characters and abilities that keep things interesting and fresh without me having to do much additional work. Sure, you might call me lazy but I’m having a blast!
Justin Bell
Task Team
As a design, I thought Task Team was average fare. Gather two teams of players and do silly challenges that play out in a 20-minute, low-stakes affair. It’s a so-so physical production that relies heavily on the colors blue and yellow, a large deck of cards, and a few items that upon first glance serve as nothing more than a box of props.
But in the right hands, Task Team is magic. Even though I logged nearly 500 plays in 2024, my single play of Task Team with other content creators at Gen Con was the single-most exciting time I spent at the table. A normal game of Task Team should last about 20 minutes. My group of 10 people played Task Team for nearly 90 minutes, well past the point where we were really competing to win and simply playing to continue a fun night.
The challenges in Task Team require a group of people willing to do embrace the term “dumb fun.” There are stacking challenges. People were flicking items at other people. At one point, we did a version of “Red Light, Green Light”, reminiscent of the thrilling sequence in the first season of Squid Game. At another point, I found myself hiding under a table, trying to evade a team of pursuers in a large conference room.
Task Team is amazing…or at least it was amazing on one specific night. I know it wouldn’t hold up with my Chicago-area groups because we don’t spend nearly enough time letting our guard down to engage in shenanigans quite like the ones posed by Task Team. But if I could gather the same players to try again at a convention next year, I would do it in a heartbeat.
Andrew Lynch
For some reason, when prompted to look back on 2024, I didn’t feel like I’d played much of anything special, but that’s obviously untrue. This was a bumper crop of inspired designs. Each of these games is something special.
Wilmot’s Warehouse
CMYK’s Lacuna was my favorite release of 2023, and they may well take the top spot again for 2024. Ostensibly a memory game, Wilmot’s Warehouse is really a game about story-telling, about a group of people being present and imaginative together. This is the stuff what great RPGs are made of, but without the rules and the systems. Absolute magic.
The Morrison Game Factory
2024 was the year I discovered PostCurious, the best publisher of escape room games out there, and while nary a one of their releases has disappointed me, The Morrison Game Factory offers the best story I’ve encountered in the form. I’d say I want the movie, but I don’t, really. I have the game. That’s more than enough.
Leviathan Wilds
Leviathan Wilds is fast, fun, has little downtime, and offers a plethora of mechanically inventive boards to occupy your time. This is my favorite points-based cooperative game, and the competition isn’t close. The mix of characters and classes, and the ability to play a card for its ability any time, make for a uniquely dynamic experience that feels like the culmination of a decade’s worth of designs.
Not 2024, But Still Great!
Even though this list is primarily focused on newer releases, some games are just so great that people are still playing them for the first time, even years after their release. Here are a few older games our team played and loved for the first time in 2024.
K. David Ladage
The Colonists
It was at the end of the year in 2023 that my game group decided we wanted a monthly get-together to play something that was big, heavy, took up a lot of time, and took up a lot of table space. So we started in January of 2024 with a monthly game of Twilight Imperium. Well, as it is with adult gaming groups, there was a month in there where one of us had other commitments that cropped up after the weekend was set. Our group of four, reduced to three, sat at my friend, Steve’s, game table wondering if three-player TI was worth it (in our experience, it is not). Steve stood up, walked over to his shelves and grabbed his copy of The Colonists.
Steve had played the game solo a couple of times, but had never gotten the chance to pull it out for a good player count. He went over the rules (the worker placement but not worker placement action selection system is amazing). There was definitely a lot going on in this game. As we got into the first few turns, it was obvious that The Colonists was something big, heavy, took up a lot of time, and took up a lot of table space. It also played exceedingly well with three players—it was the perfect game to replace TI that day!
All of us were racking our brains trying to find the key to taking the most efficient and impactful action each time it was our turn. When we finished that game we were all exhausted and had a feeling of supreme satisfaction. That was a great game. Mike (our winner) and I both purchased copies of the game that weekend. We also purchased the organizer/insert from Etsy (honestly, I do not believe this game is even really playable without this). This was easily the best experience I had at a game table this year; the game is a masterpiece.
Clayton Schoonover
Terraforming Mars
I’m not good at engine builders. Something about the puzzle of figuring out the best synergies between cards and what order to play everything in is beyond my comprehension. However, as bad as I am at them, engine building is one of my favorite mechanisms. And not many games tackle engine building quite like Terraforming Mars.
If I had to guess, I’d say I lose about 90% of the games I play of Terraforming Mars. Where most people would stop playing a game that’s so mean to them, I have looked at it as a challenge. I think of It that way because when I do pull off a sweet combo, and my engine does synergize just right, few things are as satisfying.
With the addition of Terraforming Mars to Board Game Arena, I’ve been able to play it virtually non-stop. This has given me a real opportunity to try out new strategies, hone old tried and true ones, and really figure out my best game. Has it made me better at the game? No, no it hasn’t. But it has improved my admiration for a game that has become my Goliath.
Andrew Lynch
Ginkgopolis
Ginkgopolis is neither new nor newly-available, but after years of hearing about this “unusual” and “inscrutable” Euro, I finally got to sit down and play it. I am smitten. Each turn presents you with an ostensibly simple choice, with only three possible actions, but nearly every turn is agonizing. Better yet, it’s interactive in a way most Euro games aren’t, and from time to time you will call another player’s shot perfectly in a way that feels so dang good. Ginkgopolis is well worth seeking out.
El Grande
Is El Grande new? Absolutely not. This game is 30 years old. Is El Grande newly available? Yes! And thank goodness, because El Grande remains one of the best games ever published. The easy rules and interactive play combine to make a best-in-class area control game, one with social and strategic tensions out the wazoo. I can’t recommend it enough.
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