Top 10 games I played for the first time in 2018

When I started writing this post, I looked back at my 2017 list, and I had to laugh because I was so optimistic that 2018 would be less rage-inducing than 2017. This past year was still rage-inducing in regards to the outside world, but there definitely was plenty of moments of pure joy for me personally and within the board-game world. I have fond memories of the experiences I had in 2018, the friendships and relationships that grew, and most importantly, all the games that I played.

So without further delay, here’s my top 10 list of games I played for the first time in 2018.

10. Dominant Species

This game from GMT Games is a classic. And by classic, I mean 2010, which by board-game standards, is pretty ancient. I played this game for the first time back in January, and I honestly couldn’t believe I haven’t played this game sooner. It’s brutal, mean and literally a game of “survival of the species.” And for such a punishing game, the components itself are quite colorful and cheery: cones and cubes among a sea of bright-colored environments.

Players take on the role of one of the major animal classes (mammal, reptile, bird, amphibian, arachnid, or insect) and they’re all trying to survive and thrive on various terrains with their asymmetrical powers, all while the impending Ice Age is coming. Players compete to have the most of their species on various hexes as well as being dominant, which is determined by your animal class. Dominant Species plays like a typical worker placement but built from a war-game foundation. Just watch out for glaciers!

9. Dinosaur Island

This was another game I played early in 2018, and OH MY GOSH — look at all these pink dinosaurs!! I came into this game thinking it would be all kinds of kitschy, but it’s a solid worker placement that comes with variable end-game conditions. Players can pick a short, medium or long game, and the game ends when scoring objectives are completed. And similar to Food Chain Magnate, you can only score objectives in the same round that everyone else does. Once an objective has been scored, the objective is closed for others in future rounds.

Players in Dinosaur Island are competing to build the best dinosaur amusement park. The game plays through several phrases in each round, from collecting DNA combinations to create dinosaurs, upgrading technology and building park attractions, to having actual visitors visit your theme park, and hoping for the best those visitors don’t get eaten. Sure, exciting carnivores will bring more visitors to your park, but if you don’t ensure security gates are at a high level, well, we all know how that plays out in those Hollywood movies, don’t we?

8. My Little Scythe

This new family game from Stonemaier Games is just darling! I got a chance to play it for the first time during Gila Monster this summer, and it truly is delightful! The game was created by a father who wanted to game with his daughter, and Stonemaier ended up publishing the fan-made version a year later. My Little Scythe comes with these chibi figurines of the original Scythe characters. ADORABLE.

The game also takes elements from Scythe — choose one of the actions on your player board, but not the same one you just did — and players move across the board, picking gems, apples or quests, and working to score objectives. And instead of combat, the game incentivizes you to drop resources where other players are, because that moves you up the friendship track. In the end, friendship is magic!

7. Bruxelles 1893

This is another older board game, circa 2013, but I can’t believe so few people have ever mentioned this game! Bruxelles 1893, a colorful game in the Art Nouveau style, is crunchy worker placement that has a clever puzzle element to it. Workers are collecting resources to build buildings, and buying and selling artwork to gain money.

The game also comes with a dial, which players can adjust to determine which resources are needed to build a building, and players can affect how much pieces of artwork will sell by moving this square across a board. The game continues for five rounds, and it’s another one of those games where you definitely cannot do most of the things you want to do. And at the start of each round, the worker-placement sections of the board are selected, which is another neat element of the game, so the building you built might not even be in play for the round. This game is totally underrated!

6. Arboretum

I played this new edition of this older card game for the first time this year. Arboretum is gorgeous and unassumingly brutal. At the start of each turn, players take two cards, play one into their arboretum and discard another card. You’re building paths of beautiful trees in order to possibly score that path at the end of the game. But you can only score that tree species if you have the highest sum of those tree cards your hand.

I love balancing that push and pull between keeping cards in your hands versus playing them down into your arboretum. You can also prevent opponents from scoring large paths by hanging on to certain tree cards. The card game is inviting enough to introduce to new gamers but strategic to engage heavy gamers like myself.

5. Catch the Moon

Catch the Moon is such a beautiful game. I just purchased it in November at BGG Con, but it’s already risen to one of my most-played games in 2018. And yes, I know it’s only a 20-minute game, but it’s one that people immediately want to play over and over again. The table presence of this game also draws curious passers-by, and more often than not, they take a seat at the next game.

Catch the Moon is a dexterity game in which players take turns adding wonky ladders to a main centerpiece that sits atop a cloud. Roll a dice, and the dice tells a player to either place a ladder that touches exactly one or two ladders, or the new ladder must be the highest point. If any ladders fall or touch the base, or the player doesn’t follow the dice’s directions, they get a tear drop because the moon is super sad. Try to get the fewest tear drops, and don’t get the last tear drop, and you’ll win the game. Each game of this has been different; some creations go up super high, while others stay really low, just barely hanging on and not scraping the cloud base.

4. Sidereal Confluence

Sidereal (which rhymes with ethereal, and, believe me, it took me some times to figure out how to say this word correctly) Confluence is a bonkers real-time negotiation and trading game that plays up to nine players who are asymmetrical alien factions working to research and run various technologies. The kicker is that they often don’t have the resources to run those technologies, hence they need to find the resources from others.

This is one of my favorite games to run at the convention, because you can assemble a large number of participants, as I think a larger player count works best for this game. There’s yelling, trading for future favors and making less-than-ideal trades because you really, really need that one last blue cube, and the time is running out. (I set each trading round to 10 minutes.) And when you have an alien race like Kt’Zr’Kt’Rtl (complete with a pronunciation guide), you know the game is gonna be insane.

3. Teotihuacan

I had the pleasure to play Teotihuacan at BGG Con, and it did not disappoint. In Teotihuacan, each player is a powerful noble family working to build the temple of Teotihuacan. You’re using your workforce of dice to move around the board like a giant rondel. Depending on the value of your dice, you receive various resources at each location, and then at the end of your turn, your dice levels up.

As with its predecesor Tzolk’in, the game is a lot about timing your actions correctly. Instead of the giant wheel cogs in Tzolk’in, the game is all about moving your dice in a way so that it levels up at the right moment, so that you can get resources to build temple steps and gain technology, among other things. Dice are moving in one direction in order to ascend to 6 pips, and then you get a reward and start over again at one location.

2. Feudum

Picking between No. 1 and No. 2 was super difficult as these two last games are equally exceptional, but for the purposes of this list, I had to pick which game belonged in which spot. For No. 2, it’s came down to Feudum. Feudum, despite its whimsy artwork and endearing behemoth, is quite a beast to learn and equally to play. But it’s definitely worth it, in my opinion.

Feudum combines elements of Concordia with using card play for taking actions, but adds area control on the board and maintaining influence in various guilds to gain benefits for various actions. It’s one of those games like Lisboa where all the actions itself aren’t difficult per se, but the interconnectivity of those actions and guilds is what makes the game truly shine. This game is definitely not everyone’s cup of tea, as I saw some criticisms online about this game being unnecessary complicated instead of complex, but I don’t agree with those assessments. It’s hefty, crunchy and pays off when you find that group of people who enjoy these type of games and are willing to put in the time to peel away at the game’s layers.

1. Coimbra

And we’re at No. 1! What edged Coimbra a bit past Feudum is its accessibility. Coimbra is an equally crunchy game, but when it’s just four rounds and plays in about two hours, more people will likely dive into this game than Feudum. Plus, people love brightly colored game boards, and there’s lots of dice! But the dice isn’t used for chucking!

In Coimbra, the dice are rolled each round, and players take turns selecting dice in which pips matter for the first half of the round, and then the color of the same dice matters for the second half of the round. In the first half of the round, players collect character cards the give them special abilities or end-game scoring points. Character cards are mostly selected from higher to lower pips, and paid for with either money or military resources. On the second half of the round, the color of the dice will give you that income resource based on there you’re sitting on one of the four tracks. Tracks galore in this game, and I always enjoy balancing all the different resources and having two different incomes. What a fantastic game!

And that’s the end of the list! Let me know what some of your favorites were this year, and what you’re looking forward to next year, either with board games or life happenings.

Happy New Year, and hope everyone has a wonderful 2019!