I have put together my top 10 games for 2022. Note that these are games that I have played for the first time in 2022, not necessarily games that were released in 2022. With all the games that I already have, I got another 13 games plus expansions last year. Some were gifts, some were purchased at the thrift stores, and some were new.
Again I failed to play ten new games. I did get two solo plays in this year. I brought a couple of solo games to the table a few times (Firefly Adventures, and Big Trouble in Little China) but was unable to find the motivation to figure out how to play them. This was also the year with the fewest new game purchases but also the first year I did not manage to play any of the new games purchased.
The new games were: All’s Quiet on the Martian Front, Castles in the Sky, Disney Villainous: Bigger and Badder, Dust Warfare, Gamma Wolves, Marvel Villainous – Mischief & Malice, Pulp!, Star Wars Villainous: Power of the Dark Side, Street Wars NYC, The Men Who Would be Kings, Unmatched – Battle of Legends Volume 2, Unmatched – Hell’s Kitchen, Unmatched – Redemption Row.
The ones I picked up not new were:
Dust Tactics Revised Core
None of these hit the table this year. Some games from previous years were finally played.
7 – Codenames: Pictures – we’re still not a huge fan of the Codenames system – where you have to give clues to your team about which card to pick, and more importantly, not pick. My wife preferred the pictures to the words in Codenames, while I prefer the words.
6 – Button Men: Beat People Up – we used to love Button Men back in the day. It is a simple battle game using dice. The new game has the characters printed onto cards instead of buttons. It didn’t play as well as I remember but that could be due to the other player who was new to the system.
5 – Gold Town – I was finally able to print out the components for this game and played through it solo. It is more about miners going to town to cash in their gold and get supplies than gunfights. The rules are pretty detailed to go through but it plays pretty well after the first few rounds. It doesn’t seem to overstay its time and will be worth giving it another try with more people.
4 – Marvel Splendor – it plays similar to the regular Splendor game with a few modifications. The Marvel theme does make this more likely for us to pick up. I am sure that there is more to this game that we have not figured out yet but we do look forward to playing it more to try to figure it out.
3 – Disney Haunted Mansion: Call of the Spirits – a simple, quick card game where you try to collect sets of ghosts without collecting too many haunt cards. The player who collects the most haunt cards loses their largest set.
2 – Don’t Look Back – a horror movie skirmish game. The rules are a bit jumbled, but I was able to play this solo. It seems like it should be a pretty fun fit for our group.
1 – Transformers Armada: Battle for Cybertron – This is based off of the Star Wars Duels system, and more importantly the new Unmatched system. It is a simplified skirmish game using cards. It went over well with our group so we should be able to play some of those as well.
