Happy Hogmanay!
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 couple of new entries, some returning classics, and then one game that earned a pretty significant promotion. let’s get into it, eh?
10: Disney Lorcana
Previous Position: New to the list
Year: 2023
Designer: David Iezzi, Ryan Miller, Steve Warner
Publisher: Ravensburger
Plays 2-6 players in ~60 to 60 minutes
I had no intention of getting into Lorcana this year, but my wife picked up a couple of starter decks on holiday and we really enjoyed it. We quickly grabbed another couple of decks to vary up the game, and it wasn’t long before I built a couple of decks as well. One was gimmicky and bad, but the other wins pretty quickly. I actually also made a deck for my wife’s Christmas, along a theme I reckoned she’d enjoy.
I reviewed the game back in September, and most of what I said still stands. It’s a fun game. It’s not a massively complicated deck and it doesn’t have the depth of Magic… but then it also doesn’t have decades of rules bloat. It’s a fantastic, light trading card game.
9: Architects of the West Kingdom
Previous Position: 7 (-2)
Year: 2018
Designer: S J Macdonald, Shem Phillips
Publisher: Garphill Games
Plays: 1-5 Players in ~60 to 80 minutes
September 2023’s Game of the month, Architects of the West Kingdom is a game that beautifully marries theme, strategy, and player interaction. It challenges you to be not only a master architect but also a shrewd decision-maker. Whether you’re a seasoned gamer or a total noob (and we had both at our table), this title is sure to captivate your attention and keep you coming back for more. Gather your apprentices, don your architect’s hat, and embark on a journey to build the most impressive structures in the kingdom.
I love this game. I played it for the first time last year and it immediately clicked. I’ve played it a lot since then. I love the buildup, the strategy, the player interactions, and the whole feel of the game. The variable player powers are relatively minor, but they have an impact on the early game that is definitely felt. This game is going to stay in regular rotation for a good while.
8: Vampire: The Masquerade
Previous Position: 8 (no change)
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.
7: Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition
Previous Position: 6 (-1)
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 some time. 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 game is… 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.
6: Warhammer: Age of Sigmar
Previous Position: 2 (-4)
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 fourth edition. I really enjoyed third edition, and it was sad to see it go, but I’m broadly happy with most of the changes that have come with the new 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.
5: Twilight Struggle
Previous Position: 4 (-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.
4: Century: Golem Edition
Previous Position: 1 (-3)
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, and it was our game of the month for October 2023. 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 an amazing game, but I prefer it with three or four players.
3: Call of Cthulhu
Previous Position: 30 (+27)
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.’ve subsequently played a lot of it over the past couple of years, and have had an absolute blast with it this year. That should be obvious from the meteoric rise in my rankings, going from number 30 last year to number 3 for 2024. It was also our game of the year in September.
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.
2: Root
Previous Position: 3 (+1)
Year: 2018
Designer: Cole Wehrle
Publisher: Leder Games
Plays: 2-4 players in ~60-90 minutes
Root is a game of adventure and conflict in a forest kingdom inhabited by a variety of adorable critters. This cutesy theming belies a complex and competitive strategy game. Players take on the role of one of the factions vying for control over the forest, each with their own unique abilities and objectives. The game is set in a richly imagined world filled with vibrant characters and complex political maneuvering.
This game is one of the best examples of asymmetrical play that I’ve seen. It just works so well, with each player playing fundamentally different games. It’s great to try different factions and really get an understanding of how the game works as a whole.
I went back and forth a lot between this game (our game of the month for April) and our number 1 game, switching their positions over and over again until Root eventually settled into second place. It was a damn close thing!
1: Magic the Gathering (Commander)
Previous Position: new to the list
Year: 1993 (for Magic: the Gathering)
Designer: Richard Garfield, David Iezzi (for Magic: the Gathering)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
Plays: 2-4 players in ~30 to 120 minutes
Ultimately, as amazing as Root is, how could anything but Commander be my game of the year? It’s my most played game of this year, and it really took me by surprise, too. I made the plunge into Commander after getting into Lorcana. I just wasn’t enjoying having money any more, you know? Lorcana really got me back into the idea of card games, and Magic seemed a more full and exciting prospect.
It coincided with painting becoming physically painful for me, so the timing was actually really good. I’ve enjoyed trying out lots of precons and building some of my own decks. My Magic Monday posts have been an absolute joy to write.
I just enjoy tinkering with decklists, sitting around a table with friends, and slinging some cards. It’s nice.
I see Magic being with me for a long time to come, and I hope that it can keep my enthusiasm as high as it has been. I’m running a little, local event at the end of January, so we’ll see how that goes as well.
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