Top 50 Games of 2023 (30-21)

It’s that time of year again for those most prestigious gaming award from my specific post code! Welcome to the NoRerolls Top 50 Games of 2023 list; an arbitrary ranking of the games that I love.

This is a list of 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.  We’ve reached the midpoint of the series, and you can click to visit part 1 and part 2, and today we’re on part 3, comprising games 30 through 21.

30: Call of Cthulhu

Previous Position: New to the list

Year: 1981

Designer: Sandy Petersen

Publisher: Chaosium

Plays: It’s an RPG, grab a party and commit some time!

Call of Cthulhu is one of the legends of the genre. It’s been around for so long and hasn’t actually changed all that much from edition to edition. I’ve long been aware of the game, and I picked up the books on a visit to London a few years ago. I finally got to actually play the game this year and had an absolute blast.

I’ve really been impressed with the quality of the books and resources that Chaosium has been putting out for 7th edition. They’re just consistently fantastic. I’ve picked up a couple of them, but have also grabbed a few classic adventures. These are easy to use given the pretty minimal changes between editions.

29: Euphoria: Build a Better Dystopia

Previous Position: 26 (-3)

Year: 2013

Designers: Jamey Stegmaier, Alan Stone

Publisher: Stonemaier Games

Plays: 2-6 players in ~60 minutes

I backed the Kickstarter for this years ago and it sat on the shelf unplayed for several years until I finally broke it out shortly before the first lockdown. This is not a new story… In this case I was completely missing out. The game is fantastic. I like worker placement games, but I only actually had Lords of Waterdeep, and I was getting bored of that. Adding this game to the mix felt pretty good, and I’ve revisited it a fair bit since.

The game is a fun worker placement with some cool resource management and excellent theming. I love the theme, which sees each player try to build their own little dystopian society in the post-apocalyptic hellscape. Fun!

28: Age of Sigmar: Soulbound

Previous Position: 31 (+3)

Year: 2020

Designer: Emmet Byrne, Zak Dale-Clutterbuck, David Guymer, Elaine Lithgow, T. S. Luikart, Dominic McDowall, Katrina Ostrander, Joshua Reynolds, Clint Werner

Publisher: Cubicle 7

Plays ~2-7ish players in however long you care to play for

I’m a sucker for a good dice pool-based RPG. I really do think that dice pool systems are my favourites; just look at games like Mutant: Year Zero and Vampire: The Masquerade. That this one is also based on Warhammer: Age of Sigmar is a big plus. I do love me some Warhams.

I initially played with a local group, and that went really well. More recently, I’ve been playing online with a German group that I met via the Unpossible Journeys Discord. I’m really enjoying this campaign as it’s proving to be really engaging, well run, and with a good-humoured group. I’m having a lot of fun with Soulbound at the moment.

27: New York Zoo

Previous Position: 17 (-10)

Year: 2020

Designer: Uwe Rosenberg

Publisher: Feuerland Spiele

Plays: 1-5 players in ~30 to 60 minutes

Uwe Rosenberg likes to publish these tile-laying games. They’re usually pretty good, too. One of his previous tile-laying games, Patchwork, was number 48 on my list back in 2018. It fell off the list in 2019 and then New York Zoo came in at number 17 last year. It’s fallen a bit this year, but still makes it to the table a lot.

This is way better than Patchwork. I really love it. I didn’t think I would when I first played it; it just didn’t look like my sort of thing. I am delighted to have been proven wrong. The game is fun, cute, and can get pretty competitive.

26: New Angeles

Previous Position: 13 (-13)

Year: 2016

Designer: James Kniffen

Publisher: Fantasy Flight Games

Plays: 4-6 players in ~120 to 240 minutes

I really like the Android setting. The body of artwork that Fantasy Flight amassed for their work on the now-discontinued Android: Netrunner is simply stunning and, I hope, will see significant reuse in future games in this setting. The Android setting book for the Genesys RPG is also pretty fantastic.

New Angeles is all about negotiation and I love it. Players each take the role of one of the major corporations (or a federalist infiltrator looking to sabotage the game) as they work together to meet the needs of the city and jockey for influence within it. They bid to be the player to launch specific projects aimed at optimising or adjusting the production in the city or just for personal gain. I love the interactions, negotiations, and backstabbing that the game fosters.

The thing is, I’ve not managed to get this to the table in a few years. It’s a pity, because I do love it. It takes some core elements of the Battlestar Galactica board game and bundles them into an even better game. I need to try and get it to the table, and it might recover some of the standing it’s lost this year.

25: Paperback

Previous Position: 20 (-5)

Year: 2014

Designer: Tim Fowers

Publisher: Self-Published

Plays: 2-5 players in ~45 minutes

Liking both word games and deck builders, Paperback – the marriage of the two – was a no-brainer for me.  As in other deck builders, you are working to build an engine with your deck, but in Paperback you are not just trying to play a series of optimal cards to give you currency to buy effective action cards and valuable points cards.  I mean, you are doing this, but your cards are also letters and combinations of letters that should spell out words.

I like the form factor of this game, being the same size as a deck builder toolkit box for Magic: the Gathering and yet fitting in a deep, fun experience.  The visual design is clear and simple.  There’s no art on most of the cards, except for the points cards, which are imagined as book covers from various genres.  This lack of visual generosity would bug me in another deck builder, but it works here, with each card only representing a letter or group of letters.  It actually helps maintain clarity.

This has been a pretty consistent favourite for me, but not one I’d play with every group, largely because I know that some people are just not confident or comfortable with the spelling aspect.

24: Among the Stars

Previous Position: 12 (-12)

Year: 2012

Designer: Vangelis Bagiartakis

Publisher: Artipia Games

Plays: 2-4 players for ~30 minutes

A really great drafting game, Among the Stars sees each player building a space station with their drafted tiles. These stations are all about synergy, with different tiles interacting with one another in order to generate points. it sounds pretty simple, and it is. The drafting stage is an absolute joy, as you rummage through your options, working out what works best with what you’ve already got and considering your options for the future of your station.

Visually, this game is an absolute treat, with each room being lovingly depicted in fantastic, original artwork. I’ve played this game a lot and I’m still playing around with different synergies and options. I never feel like I’m just trying to recreate the same bases over and over, but rather adapting to a fresh design each time.

Like many other games, it’s tumbled down the charts not because it’s a bad game, but because new games have come in at higher positions and I’ve just not been as tempted to get this to the table.

23: Dungeons & Dragons (5E)

Previous Position: 21 (-2)

Year: 2014

Designer: Jeremy Crawford, Mike Mearls, Bruce R. Cordell, Peter Lee, Robert J. Schwalb, Rodney Thompson, James Wyatt

Publisher: Wizards of the Coast

Plays: Ideally 4-6 over however long you want. Again, RPGs…

D&D had been in my top 10 every year until last year. It’s good, of course, and this edition is really good, but there’s a shelf of RPGs behind me as I type this that I’d rather play on any given day. I think my D&D-fatigue is what’s precipitated this fall. I still love it. I still want to play. Just… could we maybe try something else? There are so many more interesting roleplaying games.

The groups I’ve played with over the past few years are what preserve the game as being worth playing. I’ve made new friends through this game, played in the longest campaign I’ve taken part in for any RPG, and just had a damn good time. D&D has broadened my horizons.

D&D also reinvogorated my after-school tabletop gaming group. It had been dwindling as our older members moved on, but by focusing on both younger children and on RPGs specifically, we’ve more than tripled our previous attendance figures. Again, it’s also been fun, but also a lot more work than it had previously been!

22: Escape the Dark Sector

Previous Position: New to the list

Year: 2020

Designers: Alex Crispin, Thomas Pike, James Shelton

Publisher: Themeborne

Plays: 1-6 players in ~45 minutes

I first picked this game up on holiday in 2022, but I never got it to the table until late 2023. I should have made more of an effort to, because I really enjoyed it when I did and it was November’s game of the month.

It plays like a choose your own adventure-style book, with randomised events that present decisions and challenges to players as a narrative begins to unfold. The game did lull me into something of a false sense of security, starting off pretty easy, but it then quickly ramped up and started beating us down. It hurt!

The experience was really great, though I imagine this is the sort of game that would benefit from expansions. I could see the appeal of, once the game has been played a lot, adding in more event, characters, equipment and like for the sake of variety and replayability.

21: Traveller (Mongoose 2nd Edition)

Previous Position: 11 (-10)

Year: 2016

Designer: Shawn Driscoll, Dale C. McCoy, Jr., Marc W. Miller, Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan, Matthew Sprange

Publisher: Mongoose Publishing

Plays: I dunno, several (?) players in ~Yeah, this doesn’t work for RPGs minutes

This is one of the RPGs that I make more of an effort to collect. Partly because I really like the system and the production values of the books, and partly because the release schedule is quite forgiving. Mongoose isn’t flooding the market with a ton of crap for Traveller, so I’m able to keep up pretty easily, especially when I’m not collecting adventures. That said, with the resurgence of miniatures in my life, my RPG collecting has fallen somewhat by the wayside.

Traveller definitely has one of the most interesting character creation processes that I’ve ever seen. I like that at the end of the whole thing you’ve got not only a sheet of stats and skills, but also a detailed backstory. It can throw up a few oddities, of course. I once rolled up a naval officer who had managed to lose a few limbs in his career and had spent a long time in prison. Good times!

I also had a really fun game of Traveller at Tabletop Scotland in 2019. Good GM, lovely group. Have run it a couple times since, and am currently playing in a game of first edition Traveller which is going very well.

See you next time for part 4, featuring games 20-11