It’s only July, but Drillers is my board game of the year so far

Yes, I know it’s too early to decide the best board games of 2026. Gen Con is just around the corner, bringing with it a slew of new releases. We aren’t even close to Essen yet. I have so many Kickstarters still expected in the mail. But if I had to pick a favorite, right this minute, of the games I’ve played this year, Drillers would be top of the pile.

Czech Games Edition’s new game is the little deck-builder that could. It’s not re-inventing the genre, but the ground it re-treads has been polished ’til it gleams. Streamlined design does a lot of the heavy lifting, but just as much of the appeal is the theme.

In Drillers, you play as prospectors, eager to drill as much wealth as you can out of an abandoned mine. There’s plenty of gems to dig out of a major company’s leftovers, and you’ve built a custom mech for the job.

These mechs, which you’ll push around the mine as miniatures, are a delight. One player mans a modified school bus with a massive drill mounted on the front. One adapts an airplane and another a train carriage. There’s even a steamboat with drill arms and spider legs (which my friend took great joy in adding sound effects to as he scuttled up and down the board).

The art and rulebook paint a picture of an oil-greased world of second-hand ingenuity. It’s a rough-and-tumble sci-fi world of hardened freelance laborers, where your industrial dreams are held together with grease, duct tape, and pure spite.

It’s an utterly compelling concept, and it’s the main reason my regular play group was so keen to give Drillers a try. I use the word ‘charming’ way too often in board game reviews, but it’s hard not to repeat it here.

Rules-wise, Drillers feels like a distant cousin of Lost Ruins of Arnak. So much so that one testing table had an extended debate about whether you need to own both (the jury is still out on that one).

Every player starts with a basic deck representing the tools they’ve modded onto their mechs. Each also includes a single damage card. These subtract from your end-game points if they remain in your deck, but they can be played for card draw or fuel (the resource you’ll spend to play cards from your hand).

On your turn, you’ll play as many cards from your hand as you please during the Operations Phase. You can play a card to boost your fuel, or you can spend fuel to gain the card’s main benefits. Each offers something different, but most either give you drills or movement.

For each movement you spend, you can move that many tiers up and down the mine board. Drills are used to gather resources on your chosen floor. Spend a drill to hoover up a loose gem on the ground, or spend several to drill into the mine’s walls. Both are worth points. All gems on your board score based on their rarity, and you can sell them to generate income (more on that later).

Wall tiles, meanwhile, are added to your player board’s progress track, earning the points printed. You gain a similar tile if you drill down, opening the next floor of the mine and revealing its unique gameplay effects (these change from game to game, adding a nice dose of replayability).

You can also flip a tile at any time, reducing its value in exchange for useful resources. This progress track sets the pace of the game. The first player to reach certain milestones on it earns additional points, and the game ends when someone reaches the very end.

The game can end sooner, however. Your player board also has an overflow space for gems, and the game ends if this overflow ever meets the tiles on your progress track. It’s a race to the finish, Ark-Nova-style.

To get gems in the overflow, you’ll need to sell more than three of the same rarity. Gems become worth less cash when you have more of them, but they’re always worth the same amount of points – even if they’re still stuck in your storage at game-end.

Right, storage. Every player has a maximum fuel and storage capacity, but you can upgrade it during the Surfacing phase. This only takes place if you end your Operations Phase on the surface at the top of the board. Stay in the mines, and no Surfacing for you.

Surfacing allows you to refill your fuel for free, upgrade your capacities, sell gems from storage, remove cards from your deck that score negative points, and purchase new cards for your deck. There are four shops to buy from, each offering ways to upgrade your drilling, moving, card draw, and so on. You can purchase a card or sell a single gem from inside the mine if you have a drone token spare, but these are limited and refresh infrequently.

Once Operations and Surfacing are over, you clean up and move onto the next player. There’s not much player interaction to keep you focused between turns, but as long as no one catches a case of analysis paralysis, turns are speedy.

Pacing, in fact, is one thing that Drillers does spectacularly well. The game estimates 30 minutes per player, and it generally sticks to its promise. I’d recommend high player counts over duo or solo games, because it makes for more action-packed games.

Capping off the great pacing is a thrilling climax. Once a player triggers end-game, the mine, made unstable by all that drilling, collapses. All other players have a single turn before everything comes tumbling down. You’ll lose points depending on how deep you are in the mine at game end, so make sure you have an escape plan!

Drillers a mid-weight strategy with plenty of brain-teasing moments, but games feel casual more than they do crunchy. It’s a perfect Saturday afternoon game, one I’d feel comfortable putting in front of my non-gamer family members.

There’s just one oil splat that stains Drillers’ shining exterior. The components are extremely disappointing. Czech Games has supplied wonderful dual-layered player boards with tokens you can push around to your heart’s content.

The gems, however, are generic translucent cubes of various colors. Some of those colors are incredibly difficult to tell apart, to the point where I think this could be an accessibility issue for color-blind people (or anyone who has a tough time distinguishing yellow from green).

There’s also a deck holder that became the real villain of my testing games. The stand allows players to view the top card of their deck at all times in secret, so only they know the first card they’ll draw next. The problem is these stands are thin and flimsy – so your deck will constantly fall out of place. We had repeat issues with these in every game, and it became a point of frustration for all involved.

It’s a sad blemish on an otherwise brilliant play experience. Especially considering I’ve praised some of CGE’s previous games (looking at you, SETI) for their outstanding production value.

Still, if you can move past the physical parts, Drillers is a great time. It’ll be widely available from Q3 onwards, so I’m looking forward to hearing more people’s thoughts on the title (if you have opinions, you can always hit me up in the Wargamer Discord).

A review copy was provided by the publisher.

Source: Wargamer