Every new year brings about a fresh start, a chance to improve oneself with new year’s resolutions (spoiler: they’ll be broken by President’s Day) and looking forward to a new year (spoiler: that’ll be a different post from our most anticipated games). It’s also a time to reflect back on the year that was. And in the board game space, that means making a list of our favorite games which, for some of us, can be as anxiety inducing as the Gen Con hotel lottery.
We live in a wonderful era of gaming that no matter what style of game you like, there were probably quite a few quality releases last year. Here are the staff’s picks for our favorite board games in 2024:
Wilmot’s Warehouse
Chosen by Dylan (and Bailey)
When you tell others that Wilmot’s Warehouse is a cooperative memory game, you have to follow it with assurance that it is a good game. The basic idea is that you put out 35 titles in a grid and you have to quickly remember which one is which after they are flipped face down. Where the magic happens is that you tell stories to facilitate players’ memory based on the shapes, their placement on the grid, and what they are adjacent to. I still remember the first time I played five months ago where we built a story of a math teacher who was passionate about the arts. That is what the game does, and in that game, we had a 90% success rate at saying what tiles were flipped down. It feels like magic to have the success rate players do.
2-6 Players • Ages 8+ • 30 minutes • $35
Harmonies
Chosen by Tahsin
At first glance, Harmonies is a disarming little game about placing blissfully colored tokens on a simple hexagonal board with few restrictions. The art aims for softness and has a children’s book quality in the way it renders pictures of friendly forest animals. But beyond the looks here hides a web of thorns of delicious point scoring for token placement creating landscapes and representation of animal habitats. I will happily play this gem of a game anytime. For what it is, it easily beats out Cascadia and Azul while borrowing heavily from those games. This is a title that deserves a place in every gamer’s collection.
1-4 Players • Ages 8+ • 30-45 minutes • $35
Star Trek: Into the Unknown
Chosen by Marcus
As a big fan of Star Trek: Attack Wing, I was anticipating this game all year, as its release date got constantly pushed back in true WizKids fashion. It turned out that it was worth the wait. With detailed “minis” (I use the term lightly given the size of the Enterprise-D and Dominion battlecruiser) and story-based objectives that don’t encourage combat as a first resort, of the many Star Trek games I’ve played, this one feels like an episode of the show. The amount of information and rules can feel a little overwhelming at first, but after you get through the starter game, it makes sense. Players of Attack Wing that have long asked for more capital ship-style games in the vein of Star Wars: Armada will be very happy with this new take on Star Trek miniatures.
2-6 Players • Ages 14+ • 30-180 minutes • $149
Tower Up
Chosen by James
This was a tough pick for me between Tower Up and Agueda (my half-year and Best of Gen Con winner) and either game could go here. Flip 7 almost got the nod as a game I’ve played a ton and introduced to a bunch of different people. It also could’ve been Arydia but I only got two sessions in during 2024 and didn’t think that was enough to snag the award but it’s a strong 2025 contender a week into the year. But what I love about Tower Up is that it’s deceptively simple in which you either build or gather resources but its depth is in how you execute your turns to advance four different scoring tracks while also looking to accomplish one of the three objectives for the game. The twist on building is whatever building you’re building, you have to add resources to adjacent buildings which both limits building height and makes resource management critical. And with scoring your colored roofs at the end of the game, securing a top floor can mean the difference in a game that typically features tight scoring. Lastly, it has an amazing table presence and sets up and plays quickly making it great for mid-week gaming.
2-4 Players • Ages 8+ • 30-45 minutes • $46
Gaslands: Refuelled
Chosen by Tony
As is tradition for me, I revealed my favorite games of the year at the end of December in our Top 10 Board Games of 2024 list, written by Brandon and me. So I choose my favorite “new to me” game for this list. And this year I’m going with Gaslands: Refuelled (review coming soon). Published by Osprey Games, Gaslands is a post-apocalyptic racing game that uses Matchbox (or Hot Wheels) cars. As most people have a ton of those already, there is little you need to buy other than the rulebook. But the game is fast and furious (no relation to the movies) with lots of vehicular mayhem. You can use a variety of vehicles from performance cars to dirt bikes to even an ice cream truck. Then you outfit it with crew and weapons and hit the road. The system plays smoothly and is very flexible in using what you have lying around. I’m already getting into kitting cars to fit the theme. It’s a deep rabbit hole I’m diving down it with no brakes.
2-8 Players • Ages 10+ • 45-90 minutes • $25
Let’s Go! To Japan
Chosen by Andy
Let’s start with the fact that there is an exclamation point in this game right in the middle of the name. How cool that is, unless you’re one of the proofreaders for BGQ, in which case it can be a little infuriating. Punctuation quibbles aside, this is a great, quick game with fun and lightweight engine building and a strong theme. The backstory is that veteran game designer Josh Wood and his partner were planning a trip to Japan when COVID hit, and as a result, their plans were all for naught. Except that Wood turned the planning process into a cool little game. Players take turns drafting cards and placing them out to fill a 6-day, 2-city itinerary, aiming to match tags (think Terraforming Mars) together on certain days to earn bonus activities or upgrades on train travel between Kyoto and Tokyo. If you’ve ever been to Japan as a tourist, the theme will resonate deeply; if not, it might inspire you to plan your own trip. This is a game hobbyists can enjoy as a light snack, but you could also use it as a gateway to draw in your non-gamer friends. LG!TJ is my 一番 (Ichiban, #1) game of the year.
1-4 Players • Ages 10+ • 45-60 minutes • $46
Stamp Swap
Chosen by Emma
I love a good thematic game, the more niche the subject the better. But a subject so niche and historically nerdy that I know next to nothing about it? Chef’s kiss! I had absolutely no interest in Stamp Swap until I sat down to play it. In retrospect my disinterest was surprising, considering it comes from Stonemaier Games, which has produced some of the most popular games of this decade, and is designed by Paul Salomon, whose previous game Honey Buzz is one of my favorites. Stamp Swap is a tile drafting tableau builder, and after playing it once I was utterly enchanted. Players draft stamp tiles from a public pool, then split up the tiles they’ve drafted into two piles, one to keep for themself and one to be swapped with another player. Different goals add complexity to the scoring, and getting the stamps arranged exactly as you need them in your notebook tableau can be a challenge. It’s a nifty little game that leans into the specificity of its theme in a way that delights me.
1-5 Players • Ages 14+ • 20-60 minutes • $40
Ezra and Nehemiah
Chosen by April
Ezra and Nehemiah is a robust euro-style game about rebuilding the walls and temple of Jerusalem during the Persian rule. While a lot is going on in this game, the main engine is your personal deck of cards, which fuels a worker placement mechanism. Each card depicts a number of banners—the color of the banners being associated with different actions you can take on the main board, and the number of banners determining the strength of an action. When you play a card it goes to one of three discard piles on your personal board and remains face up, so that on future turns you can add its banners to your actions, making them stronger. Eventually, you will have three faceup cards, then will have to choose which of those cards to cover, thus hiding its banners, with a new card. This means your brain is constantly working—in a good way—to puzzle out in what order you want to play your cards and which banners you want to utilize while remaining flexible based on the cards in your hand. This delicious balance of long-term planning and adaptability is just what I crave in games, which is why Ezra and Nehemiah quickly leapt to the top of my list for my favorite game of 2024.
2-4 Players • Ages 13+ • 90-120 minutes • $55
Leviathan Wilds
Chosen by Austin
It’s not quite right to say Leviathan Wilds was a surprise, since I was excited enough to back it on crowdfunding, but I was not expecting it to hit as hard as it did. It’s a game that just manages to feel right—especially the movement, which does a ton of heavy lifting to make you actually feel like climbing a massive behemoth. It’s an excellent core to wrap a game’s mechanisms around, and everything else works so harmoniously with that system. The Leviathan’s ever-escalating actions incentivize you to move recklessly, and the multi-use cards give you tons of options to make exciting moves. Plus, there are so many different Leviathans, characters, and class types that you never have to play the same game twice if you don’t want to. One of my favorite cooperative games of all time, and my favorite game of 2024 by a pretty wide margin.
1-4 Players • Ages 10+ • 45-90 minutes
Middle Ages
Chosen by Jason
It’s probably not objectively the best game from last year. Hell, it’s a reskin and not something new. However, not only was it my most played game last year, it was one I enjoyed every time I played it. Out of everything I played, this one stuck out in my mind the most. By that metric, it makes it the best. It’s a race for points with a whiff of engine building thrown in. Players select randomly placed tiles ala Kingdomino, dictating the selection order for the next round. Easy to understand rules and iconography, Middle Ages is very accessible for you to teach and others to play without feeling bogged down. It feels random at times, but the game moves quickly enough for this to keep even the most AP-prone person engaged and moving along.
2-5 Players • Ages 10+ • 30 minutes • $32
Warhammer Age of Sigmar: 4th Edition
Chosen by George
The launch of the 4th edition of Age of Sigmar started with the Great Horned Rat ascending into the chaos god pantheon and all-out war breaking out across the mortal realms as the Skaven attacked on all fronts against any and all opponents. The Summer release saw a change to point values, army building, and ally rules. Not to mention the massive change to endless spells that caused them to be auto-buy models for any serious player of the game. Overall the edition was a slight improvement on the third edition and I have played a multitude of games since its release. This also included the Spearhead game mode with fixed armies at a smaller scale which I know pushed people to take the leap into the full game. Games Workshop continues to improve upon one of its best games and I am looking forward to what they are releasing over the next year!
2 Players • Ages 12+ • 60+ minutes • $112
The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-Earth
Chosen by Chris
A few games could have gotten the nod from me for this list and, sadly, there are many others that I haven’t gotten a chance to play just yet. But for my money, the best of the year has been the reworked version of Antoine Bauza and Bruna Cathala’s classic two-player game 7 Wonders Duel. It shares the same basic structure as its older cousin, but adds an area-control winning condition as well as a fun “chase” mechanism (which comes with a nifty slide-rule type component). The game even works well thematically, but that honestly doesn’t matter much because the mechanisms are clean and the choices players make remain engaging throughout. The base game here is also a more complete experience than base 7 Wonders Duel. For those of you in the audience who may have passed on this one due to its theme or quibbles with the “reskinning” of other games, I highly recommend you check this one out before passing judgment.
2 Players • Ages 10+ • 30-45 minutes • $31
Compile: Main 1
Chosen by Brandon
While you’ve already seen ten of my favorite games of the year on an earlier list, one game that I didn’t get enough time with (and still could use more) that I’m warming up to is Compile: Main 1. This is a card game with groupings of specific themes (Gravity, Water, Life, etc…) that pits players against each other in lane battles. Players attempt to compile their three lines before the other player. The interesting idea behind the system is that each themed group of cards can be combined in many different ways to create interesting combos and unique ways to manipulate the lanes. It’s fast, it’s fun, and as you draw new cards into hand there are always fresh avenues to work toward finishing your compile first. The card quality is excellent with foil flourishes too.
2 Players • Ages 8+ • 20-30 minutes • $20
Primal: the Awakening
Chosen by Brian B
I love boss battles and cooperative games, and this game blended both beautifully. The behavior mechanic (the monster has no turns, but reacts to your actions) is brilliant. It simulates two things simultaneously, both of which are important for a boss battler: a) looking for tells for openings when hunting your prey and b) learning what the tells are so that, after multiple plays, you get better at hunting monsters. I thoroughly enjoyed character advancement, both in the action cards you can select during the campaign as you grow, as well as the new loot you can craft. Finally, I love the variability that comes with the game. The core set includes 13 unique monsters to fight, most of which have up to four different difficulties to fight. If coops or boss battlers are your thing, I highly recommend you at least try Primal. I know it is an expensive game, but you most likely will decide it is worth it!
1-4 Players • Ages 12+ • 60-90 minutes • $219
Castle Combo
Chosen by Jacob
Look, I don’t know if Castle Combo is the best game of 2024, but it is undoubtedly the game I played the most. There’s nothing revolutionary about this tableau builder, it shares a lot of similarities with Fantasy Realms (minus the large-chested women, thankfully). But where in Fantasy Realms, you are secretly building a 7-card hand with perfect synchronicity, in Castle Combo you are building a 3×3 open-faced tableau that scores points off other cards in your tableau. Everyone can see what you’re up to and can plan accordingly, and the ability to wipe out available cards is a fun additive. The art is delightful, and it’s an incredibly light filler game. It’s just kind of perfect for what it is, particularly for 2 and 3 players (it dips in quality the more players you add). I’ve probably played it nearly 100 times on Board Game Arena alone, and it’s wonderfully satisfying. If you want to find out what makes it so enjoyable, check out my review here.
2-5 Players • Ages 8+ • 10-25 minutes • $24
Source: Board Game Quest
