It’s that time of year again for what might just be the most prestigious gaming award that can be given out by mere mortals! Welcome to the NoRerolls Top 50 Games of 2024 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:
This year, this section of the list has a trio of new entries, some returning classics, and then a few games that were previously higher on the list. Let’s kick things off, shall we?
20: Fiasco
Previous Position: 9 (-11)
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 a couple of my own in 2022 and 2023.
19: Apiary
Previous Position: New to the list
Year: 2023
Designer: Connie Vogelmann
Publisher: Stonemaier Games
Plays: 1-5 players in ~60 to 90 minutes
This game became a pretty major fixture for me for a while, both at club and at home. If anything, we overplayed it. I predicted back in March that this would be a top 20 game for me and it did make it into that bracket. If the list had been written this summer, then this might have actually broken the top 10. I think this, like Clank, ended up getting a bit overplayed.
Still, it’s amazing. I love it. I’ve actually got the expansion sitting behind me, having been kindly provided by Stonemaier for a review. I’ll get to that in January!
This is game that I can play with all sorts of groups, and it’s definitely among my top 3 worker placement games. You’ll see the other two appear later in this top 50 list. I can see this continuing to be a regular fixture on my table.
18: Eldritch Horror
Previous Position: 12 (-6)
Year: 2013
Designer: Corey Konieczka, Nikki Valens
Publisher: Fantasy Flight Games
Plays: 1-8 players in ~120 to 240 minutes
Eldritch Horror is an expansive game of cooperative awesomeness. Players work together to defeat an evil threat to the world. This is often, for me and my group, an exercise in utter, doomed futility, but that’s ok. I love how this works. I love that there are a lot of moving parts going on. I love how characters develop as the game goes on.
I particularly like playing this when there’s no time pressure and with a group that will really get into the spirit of the game. Just reading the mechanical implications of the cards does work, and it’s probably the fastest way to play. I prefer properly reading each card as, adding up all of the horrific events that these characters go through, you end up with quite a story developing in each game. Eldritch Horror is fun and it is difficult, and I continue to love it.
17: 1960: The Making of the President
Previous Position: 16 (-1)
Year: 2007
Designers: Christian Leonhard, Jason Matthews
Publisher: GMT Games
Plays: 2 players in ~90 minutes
When I first got the game, after only playing it once or twice, I just saw it as a lighter, simpler Twilight Struggle. I questioned why, with most people, I would choose this over TS. Since then, I’ve played it a lot more and, although I still prefer Twilight Struggle, I see the value of 1960 far more clearly than I did. It has players taking on the roles of the Kennedy and Nixon campaigns in the 1960 US presidential election. It’s actually quite unique and offers a different experience to Twilight Struggle. It is a little lighter, but it’s interesting in a very different way.
I love the back-and-forth of the game. The idea of taking the candidates and zipping them here and there across the US is a lot of fun. As with Twilight Struggle and Washington’s War, I really like the card-driven nature of the game. I’m a lot better with Nixon than with Kennedy in this game. Tricky Dick’s had my back.
16: Isle of Skye
Previous Position: 13 (-3)
Year: 2015
Designer: Andreas Pelikan, Alexander Pfister
Publisher: Lookout Games
Plays: 2-5 players in ~30 to 50 minutes
This nearly made the list in 2022, but I didn’t manage to play it until we were already halfway through the list in December, and having only played it once I was not quite sure where it would fit. Pretty high, was the answer!
Playing it more in 2023, it was clear that this was something special. There are elements of Carcassonne here, which is a big plus for me, and a great drafting/bidding system that makes individual tile draws and choices so much more meaningful. This appreciate has only grown in 2024, and although it’s fallen a few places, that is not a reflection on Isle of Skye, but is just high praise for just how good the games above it are.
15: Paranoia
Previous Position: 15 (no change)
Year: 1984
Designer: Greg Costikyan, Dan Gelber, Eric Goldberg, Ken Rolston, Paul Murphy
Publisher: Mongoose Publishing (Originally West End Games)
Plays ~2-7ish players in however long you care to play for
Previously, my preferred edition of Paranoia was 2nd. This is still the best edition that comes as a single book. The boxed edition from Mongoose was bloody fantastic and I’d say that I had 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 this 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’ve also picked up and am really looking forward to trying the new edition, but I’ve just not had time to properly digest it enough to get it to the table.
14: Malifaux, 3rd edition
Previous Position: 14 (no change)
Year: 2019
Designer: Matt Carter, Mason Crawford, Aaron Darland, Kyle Rowan
Publisher: Wyrd Games
Plays: 2 players in ~90 to 120 minutes
Malifaux returned to my life last year, and I am delighted at that. It was my Game of the Month back in February 2023 and I painted two crews for it (Leveticus and Jack Daw) in October. I had plans for another crew/keyword this year, but joint paint does derail painting plans.
I’ve had an absolute blast with third edition. Oh, sure, I’m a bit tired of my most regular opponent setting me on fire with his Kaeris crew, but otherwise it’s going really nicely. The game works. The game is engaging. The game flows.
Don’t get me wrong; there’s a lot to it. There are so many tokens and markers (I made some scheme markers, scrap/corpse markers and status tokens last year) and conditions and whatnot that just add up and become quite complex, but the core of the game is reasonably straightforward. What I particularly enjoy is the deck of cards that replaces your dice, and the ability to maintain a hand of cards. It’s such a good system for opposed duels.
The miniatures are also gorgeous. I do think that some of the new ones for third edition veer a little more towards the bland, but many of them, and many of the 2nd edition ones in particular, really stand out as special, unique, beautiful minis.
I’m hoping to play more of this next year!
13: The Dresden Files Roleplaying Game
Previous Position: 5 (-8)
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.
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.
12: Scout
Previous Position: New to the list
Year: 2019
Designer: Kei Kajino
Publisher: Oink Games
Plays: 2-5 players in ~15 minutes
This is a fantastic, little box. It’s just a stack of cards and a couple stacks of tokens. Simple, innit? The game itself is a but like Rummy, but with a set hand order. Once you have your hand, you can’t reorder your cards, and instead need to make the most of what you have to form sets and runs.
It sounds simple, but that’s largely because it is. It’s really simple, but it’s also incredibly satisfying. I play this at club, but I also play it a lot with family. Taking it on holiday with in in-laws is why this became my Game of the Month back in June. This is an amazing little game.
11: Everdell
Previous Position: new to the list
Year: 2018
Designer: James A. Wilson
Publisher: Starling Games
Plays: 1-4 players in ~40 to 80 minutes
I picked up Everdell in 2023, but it wasn’t until 2024 that I actually got it to the table. It seems that I was really missing out! I’ve played it a lot since that first game, and it was my Game of the Month in May.
I keep revisiting this game, and I try to vary my strategies, because I love building different sorts of towns, enjoying all the cool art, and generally having a great time. I win more often than I lose, which is a nice change for me! I think once you know how different cards interact with each other, you do have a slight advantage.
This is just a solid, delightful worker placement game.
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