The least prestigious award in tabletop gaming returns after a 2 year, pandemic-related hiatus! Woo and/or yay!
Welcome to our top 50 games list for 2022, in which I list my personal top 50 games at this point in time. My choices are not limited to games from this calendar year, but instead, represent my current thoughts on the top 50 games to me. Next year, some of the games featured may move up and down as my opinions change and I get the chance to play more games or revisit old favourites.
This series will comprise 5 posts, each covering 10 games as we work down from number 50 to number 1. Here’s what we’ve had so far:
Let’s jump on into the top 10, shall we?
10: Fiasco
Previous Position: 32 (+22)
Year: 2009
Designer: Jason Morningstar
Publisher: Bully Pulpit Games
Plays 3-5 players in a few hours
Fiasco is an absolute smasher of a game, that I love, and which is loved by friends as well. Credit to the group I learned to play it with, as they were wonderfully creative, knew each other well enough to play off one another’s characters and were always cooperative in working towards a great story. That Fiasco gave us the scaffolding to build such a story and have a fantastic time in the process is a credit to Bully Pulpit.
It also saw a fair bit of play during lockdown, and I learned how to design and create a Fiasco tool for playing on Roll20:
Mechanically, the game is really simple is the rules are just there to support the storytelling. I also like the plug-and-play nature of the playsets, and put out my own one earlier this month!
9: Warcry
Previous Position: New to the list
Year: 2019
Designer: Uncredited
Publisher: Games Workshop
Plays: 2-4 Players in ~30 to 60 minutes
Warcry is really fun. It’s a game that, in previous years, I’d get a wee intro game of, and then forget about for months on end, and then get another intro game. The cycle would continue ad nauseum. This year, I finally embraced the game and I am so happy that I did. It helps that there’s suddenly a lot more of the game being played at our local club.
It’s not really a cut-down version of Age of Sigmar, but rather a completely different game that just looks pretty similar. It’s certainly a big step up over the old Age of Sigmar Skirmish rules which were fine, but not really anything special. This ruleset is just so intuitive and simple, and I really appreciate it for what it is. I’m also excited that the releases are becoming more varied and regular.
8: Paranoia
Previous Position: 6 (-2)
Year: 1984
Designer: Greg Costikyan, Dan Gelber, Eric Goldberg, Ken Rolston, Paul Murphy
Publisher: West End Games
Plays ~2-7ish players in however long you care to play for
Up until recently, my preferred edition of Paranoia was 2nd. This is still the best edition that comes as a single book. The latest edition from Mongoose is bloody fantastic and I’d say that I’ve fully made the switch and committed to this edition. I was doubtful about it, as it went to using entirely D6s and changed the game quite significantly.
Paranoia, in its current incarnation, is manic fun. The new approach to character creation sets the tone of the game from the very beginning, allowing players to really dick each other over from the get-go. The use of action cards for combat is also good, but took a bit of getting used to. I’m trying to keep up with releases for this edition and, so far, I have the complete set of what’s been released.
I’m also really looking forward to picking up the new edition, once it’s released.
7: Star Wars: Rebellion
Previous Position: 7 (unchanged)
Year: 2016
Designer: Corey Konieczka
Publisher: Fantasy Flight Games
Plays: 2-4 players in ~180 to 240 minutes
Rebellion remains an amazing two-player experience that is essentially “Star Wars in a box”. There’s a lot potential combat in the game but, like Scythe, it’s not really a war game. It’s basically a game of hide-and-seek. The Rebels are doing the hiding and the Empire are the seekers. Combat along the way just acts as a speedbump. Both factions are a lot of fun, and this is great as they are also such different experiences. A game as the Empire is totally different from one as the Rebels, and asymmetry is something I’ve always really liked in games.
I’d call the expansion to this game pretty compulsory. Even if you don’t like the Rogue One characters (I quite like them, I suppose), you want it for the improved combat system.
6: Twilight Struggle
Previous Position: 5 (-1)
Year: 2005
Designer: Ananda Gupta, Jason Matthews
Publisher: GMT Games
Plays: 2 players in ~180 minutes
Like 1960, Twilight Struggle is a card-driven game from GMT Games. The scope of Twilight Struggle is much wider than that of 1960, covering the entirety of the Cold War, allowing players to take on the roles of the US and USSR as they attempt to spread their influence around the world. They do this by letting historic events play out, directly spending resources to spread influence or launching coups in target countries. Scoring is presented as a tug-of-war between the two superpowers, which works well and contributes to the tone and feel of the game.
I’ve played a lot of this game over the years, and I’ve also picked up the PC edition in order to squeeze in yet more games, either against distant online opponents or against the computer. I’ll play this whenever I get the chance because I not only enjoy the game, but I really appreciate it, if that makes sense? Like, it’s fun, but I also love watching the game unfold, telling a story as it does.
5: Century: Golem Edition
Previous Position: 9 (+4)
Year: 2017
Designer: Emerson Matsuuchi
Publisher: Plan B Games
Plays: 2-5 players in ~30 to 45 minutes
An impulse purchase at a game store, this is probably the best value for money I’ve ever had from a board game. I gave Century: Spice Road a miss when it came out, thinking it looked a bit dry and would not really be for me. Mechanically, I was wrong, but I still think the dry visuals would have put me off or would have seen me not play the game quite as often as I’ve played this (more fantastical) edition. The artwork is superb, as I’ve previously written.
I freakin’ love this game. It’s so accessible and simple, but it makes my brain hurt when I try to plan ahead. The points is to make combinations of coloured gems which can then be used to buy Golems (points cards). Players generate gems, use cards to trade groups of specific colours for other groups of gems, upgrade their gems… There’s a lot of moving around gems towards purchasing your golems. I’m not describing it well, but it just clicked with me.
My only slight gripe is the five-player version. With that many players, it can become really hard to plan ahead with any effectiveness. It’s still a good game, but I prefer it with three or four players.
4: Vampire: the Masquerade
Previous Position: 2 (-2)
Year: 1991
Designer: Graeme Davis, Tom Dowd, Mark Rein-Hagen, Lisa Stevens, Stewart Wieck
Publisher: White Wolf Publishing
Plays: Ideally 4-6 over however long you want. Again, RPGs…
I’ve had Vampire in my life since the late 90s and have long loved it. It’s a great RPG and I’ve run some very fun campaigns. More recently, starting with a taster at Tabletop Scotland in 2019, I’ve also gotten into the new, 5th edition with a home campaign starting soon afterwards and an online campaign during lockdown. With all of this goodness, Vampire has stayed firmly within my top 10!
Vampire is just such a good system. Mechanically, it’s fantastic. There are flaws, and certain aspects definitely lack polish, but it works well overall. The background is where it really shines. White Wolf developed such a deep, detailed, involved world that gives you a massive sandbox in which to play. I just love it.
3: The Dresden Files Roleplaying Game
Previous Position: 6 (+3)
Year: 2010
Designer: Leonard Balsera, Jim Butcher, Genevieve Cogman, Robert Donoghue, Fred Hicks, Kenneth Hite, Ryan Macklin, Chad Underkoffler, Clark Valentine
Publisher: Evil Hat
Plays: Ideally 4-6 players over several evenings, preferably with food and drink
FATE rocks. It’s a great system and I continue to collect lots of the variants and supplements and whatnot that Evil Hat continues to put out. I love Evil Hat. They are one of my favourite game companies. They just put out great stuff.
The Dresden Files is one of my favourite book series. I suppose it should come as no surprise that an RPG from one of my favourite publishers, based on one of my favourite book series will end up being one of my favourite RPGs. Favourite.
Dresden Files is one of the best implementations of the FATE system, although it does use the previous edition of the rules. That said, the core of the system is, for me, the aspect rules, and this game uses them just fine. The aspect system makes the game easy to run in a way that is directly personal to and inclusive of each individual player character.
The Dresden Files RPG books are also great objects in their own right. They are full-size A4 books (unlike most FATE books, which are A5) and are full of lovely artwork and lots of notes in the margins from the characters from the series. These production values make the books fun to slip through, even when you’re not playing or planning to play the game.
2: Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition
Previous Position: New to the List
Year: 2021
Designer: Sydney Engelstein, Jacob Fryxelius, Nick Little
Publisher: Fryx Games/Stronghold Games
Plays: 1-4 players in ~45-60 minutes
I’ve played a lot of Terraforming Mars over the past few years, but my copy of the original game has languished unplayed for a few months. This is because it has largely been replaced for me by this newer version, Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition.
As with the previous version, this is a fantastic resource management game where each player takes on the role of a corporation trying to exert control over Mars as they terraform it. You use the money that you generate to complete projects and trigger events. You generate heat to raise the temperature to livable levels, use plants to create forests to raise the oxygen content of the Martian atmosphere.
I feel that this version of the game is a lot more streamlined than the original. This is an improvement. It’s also a lot prettier, as the art in the previous games… inconsistent at best. This one just has such better production quality. The biggest change in this edition is that it has removed the central board and the area control aspect of the game. This makes the game a lot less directly competitive, which might appeal to some more than others. I love this game. I love that the project cards you get can utterly change the direction you’d planned to go in. It’s just great.
1: Warhammer: Age of Sigmar
Previous Position: 24 (+23)
Year: 2015
Designer: Uncredited
Publisher: Games Workshop
Plays: 2 players in ~40 to 180 minutes
I like being proven wrong. I was one of the many people who were less than delighted when Warhammer was shelved by Games Workshop in favour of this new game, Age of Sigmar. Round bases? Golden-armoured warriors? 4 pages of rules? How could this ever work?
It does, though.
I’m not going to rehash all of the arguments for and against AoS – I’ve already made my peace with it. It was a botched launch and GW did well to come back from that. The game now has a number of original armies and is in its third edition. The game is quick and easy and the support it’s had from GW has been fantastic. I get excited for new releases, and I happily bite off way more than I can chew with AoS projects.
I just love it.
No Rerolls 
6 Comments