Blog Archives
New Year, Old Year: 2022 Revisited
The wheel has turned once more. Continuing with our sporadic tradition of revisiting previous Best Weeks in order to assess my ever-changing feelings about the year’s best board games, not to mention the mutable nature of artistic taste, today we are plumbing the dark ages of 2022. Wow, what a throwback. What did I like back then? Has any of it held up? Did they even make board games that long ago? Let’s find out together.
Best Week 2024! The Index!
Another year, another Best Week. Below, you will find my favorite thirty tabletop titles of the year, ranked according to obscure criteria I found sensible at the time. Click any of the images to be whisked to the proper article. Happy New Year!
Best Week 2024! Better Together?
Yesterday we talked about the best board games that embodied our hobby’s unique sense of togetherness. Today, we must invert the concept. These are the best board games of 2024 that are also about togetherness… in the word’s more uncomfortable sense. Cramped alliances, awkward bedfellows, partners of convenience. A fitting end for one of the strongest years in memory.
Best Week 2024! Better Together!
Board games: aren’t they really about family? Friends? Togetherness? Eh, sometimes. But for those times, today we’re talking about the best games of 2024 that thrive on positive human interaction. These are the games that are about sharing experiences with your loved ones. Especially if you aren’t in the mood for anything too competitive.
Best Week 2024! Combined!
Combinations! Good stuff, those. When board games ask us to put things together, a special alchemy occurs. Sometimes we’re even treated to surprising consequences. That’s why today I want to celebrate the year’s board games that ask us to assemble peculiar engines, categories, and words.
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Best Week 2024! Adapted!
Adaptation, the process by which a work is transferred from one medium to another, is a delicate and skill-intensive art, prone to going wrong at either end of its metamorphosis. Licensed games often get a bad rap. Maybe because they’re often bad. But that only makes good adaptations all the more important to celebrate. That’s what we’re doing today. These are 2024’s best adapted board games.
Best Week 2024! Snacked!
2024 has been another incredible year of board games. For the first day of Best Week, Dan Thurot brought to me… the best snacks of the year! These are the titles that pack the most gameplay into each cubic millimeter, the ones that can be carried in a backpack or even a back pocket, the stuff that makes for a perfect day trip.
New Year, Old Year: 2021 Revisited
The wheel has turned again. And again. Although this installment of New Year, Old Year is a full year late, I’ve already explained my growing reservations with this recurring retrospective, so there’s no reason to belabor the point. Instead, here we are, on the precipice of revisiting the titles I considered the best of 2021. What did I get right? What did I get wrong? The answers may surprise you.
Or they may not. Who can tell. Not me. Either way, we’re doing things a little differently now. Rather than dividing everything into binary right/wrong categories, it seems more helpful to look back on each title in turn. Because sometimes I got things right and wrong at the same time. Nuance, y’all.
Best Week 2023! The Index!
I suspect we enjoy end-of-year lists because they ease our underlying certainty that everything will eventually be swept away by time and the sea. Anyway! 2023 was a much better year for board games than some will admit. Or perhaps my affection arises from this being the first year that my nine-year-old pretty much earned her own category. Regardless of the reason, below you will find links to every day of Best Week 2023, and from there to reviews of the year’s finest board games, puzzles, and diversions.
Here’s to another. And another. And countless more beyond.
Best Week 2023! War By Other Means!
“Wargame” has always been a wonky category, and as more board games experiment with systems and modes of expression, it only grows flimsier. To wit, today we’re looking at the best titles of 2023 that blur the boundaries of the genre, whether by covering war-adjacent topics or by using card-driven mechanisms traditionally at home in conflict sims. These are the year’s best board games about war… by other means.
SPACE-BIFF! 