With the decade coming to a close, I wanted to look at my top games of the past ten years. As someone who got into the hobby in 2011, this seemed like a perfect reflection of not just the hobby, but of my decade of playing as well.
Without further ado, lets look at 2018.
My top five games are Chronicles of Crime, Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game, Fireball Island: Curse of Vul-Kar, Railroad Ink, and Western Legends.
Honorable mention include: Betrayal Legacy, The Mind, and Welcome to…
Chronicles of Crime and Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game, while separate games and different entries on my list, will share the same paragraph as they’re deduction/mystery games that felt like version 2.0 of the acclaimed Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective game. I have had an absolute blast with both games and while the replayability is basically nonexistent, it doesn’t matter to me as I had such a good time with both.
Fireball Island: Curse of Vul-Kar was a nostalgic hit that is less strategic board game and more random dexterity fun. The game is large and clearly not for everyone but for those that had their heart strings tugged on, this was a jaunt down memory lane to a childhood that was bereft of taxes and responsibility.
Roll-and-write games were all the rage in 2018 and while the lack of interaction between players was a major cause of concern for my group, the strategic choices offered by Railroad Ink helped keep the game coming to the table.
Western Legends is a sandbox game that allows players to play the game they want to play…as long as they do that in a western theme. Merchants and Marauders didn’t hit like I thought it would but I’m still enjoying Western Legends and the freedom the game provides. While it may not hold up to other games from other years of this decade, I think it’s the clear game of 2018.
Honorable mention time! Let’s address the elephant in the room. Root (review here) is not listed. On previous posts, I’ve mentioned games that I didn’t enjoy or hadn’t played yet still included them. Root is a game I’ve played and did not enjoy and in retrospect, I don’t know what, if anything, Root did for the hobby to make it stand out against games I enjoyed. I don’t think it had the fanfare of Scythe or the lasting appeal of 7 Wonders.
Two off the Top 
2 thoughts