I have put together my top 10 games for 2021. Note that these are games that I have played for the first time in 2021, not necessarily games that were released in 2021. With all the games that I already have, I got another 16 games plus expansions last year. Some were gifts, some were purchased at the thrift stores, and some were new.
For the first time since I started tracking these back in 2013, I failed to play 10 new games this year. I only played 7 new games and 4 of these I played solo. There are another 6 games that I could have played solo but I did not find the time for them. Some of these require are the miniature skirmish games and require a larger space to set up terrain and I did not get around to clearing the space at the end of the year to play them.
The new games were: A Billion Suns, Blitz Bowl 2, Disney Haunted Mansion – Call of the Spirits, Disney Villainous – Perfectly Wretched, Don’t Look Back, Frostgrave, Ghost Archipelago, Marvel Villainous – Infinite Power, Space Marine Adventures – Doomsday Countdown, Space Marine Adventures: Rise of the Orks, Unmatched: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Unmatched: Deadpool, Unmatched: Little Red Riding Hood vs Beowulf, Warhammer 40K – 9th edition – Indomitus.
The ones I picked up not new were: Shadow War: Armageddon, Slide 5
A lot of these did not hit the table this year. Some games from previous years were finally played.
My top 7 is:
7 – Forbidden Desert – We’ll have to play this again to see if it was just the group we played with or if it isn’t as good as we had heard.
6 – Pandemic: Hot Spot – North America – It plays like a streamlined game of Pandemic. It is over very quick but the timing is very tight. I won a solo game with two characters but would have lost due to cards in two turns, or due to another outbreak.
5 – Slide 5 – It has a bit of a Connect 4 feel to it, with the addition of being able to shift rows that are already on the board. It is a fun enough light game.
4 – Roller Coaster Tycoon – Visually this is an impressive game with the roller coasters, and rides. Game wise, it is pretty simple, but wraps up before it starts to drag.
3 – Space Marine Adventures: Doomsday Countdown – I played this solo. This has the figures for the enemy team instead of just tokens. But the set up is a bit fiddly. This was the last of the three Space Marine Adventures games that I played.
2 – Space Marine Adventures: Labyrinth of the Necrons – I was able to play this solo. It is a good, simple way to expose people to the Warhammer 40K universe without being too much of a drain. The Marine figures are quite lovely, but the Necrons are only tokens.
1 – Space Marine Adventures: Rise of the Orks – I played this solo as well. It has plastic Terminator figures and tokens for the Orks forces. It is the only one of the three Space Marine Adventures games that contains a game board. This doesn’t allow as much modularity but I found the gameplay the best of the three. It is the only one of the three that does not have a campaign so might not have the legs for a lot of repeated play.
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