Lost Cities Roll and Write (Kosmos Games)

Another year has come and gone, COVID has made gaming fairly sparse, but I did manage to play 66 different tabletop games this year with friends and family (no solo games for me). The top two games we played this year are both games my partner, Sharon, and I love to play together: Lost Cities Roll & Write (Kosmos games) and the classic Skip-Bo (AMIGO/Mattel) a game as old as I am! Both are easy games to set up and play and it is not surprising that a roll & write made it to the top as we played a lot of these games on our cottage deck knowing that wind is not so much of an issue with dice.

Our top ten boardgames this year are:

  1. Lost Cities Roll & Write
  2. Skip-Bo
  3. Auction 45s (a traditional card game)
  4. Rage
  5. Dominion
  6. Xenon Profiteer
  7. Punderdome
  8. Pandemic Legacy
  9. Welcome To
  10. Space Base

Auction 45s is a staple with our friends Dale and Ady, so it is also not a surprise here and Rage(AMIGO) gets played every time I gather with my regular Tuesday night group which has finally started meeting in person again. Dominion (Rio Grande) was a surprise because even though it has been our favourite game for many years we reached the saturation point where there were too many cards for it to be fun anymore. We actually scaled back how we play the game, restricting our games to 2-3 sets at one time. This meant it got to the table a lot more often, but nothing like it had in past years where it easily would have topped the game list.

Xenon Profiteer (Eagle-Gryphon) is a game I’ve wanted for a long time and finally picked up for my birthday! It proved a hit. The next entry is one I am not that crazy about, but Sharon sure likes: Punderdome (Clarkson Potter). Her tastes do run more into the party games than my own and she looked for every opportunity to get this wacky little game to the table.

Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 (Z-Man) has been something we started up with my nephew Nick and it is quite enjoyable even though it is not the easiest to organize a game night around. And the last two most played games, Welcome To (Blue Cocker) and Space Base (Alderac) are go to games for when we have a group of people over (which hopefully will happen more often).

For tabletop role playing games Dungeons and Dragons (Hasbro) topped the list, although at least half of the plays were online mostly using the Humblewood (Hit Point Press) game setting. The other game we played online a fair bit was Blades in the Dark (Evil Hat) which is simply a fantastic game system. Our Tuesday group has started to play Forbidden Lands (Free League) in person, which I have found to be another fantastic system despite my misgivings on OSG systems. We did not get to play too many other RPGs this year, Fiasco (Bully Pulpit) made it to the table once and Van Gogh’s Ear (from James Damato’s Ultimate Micro-RPG Book ran in a one-off online session). I am hoping to do a lot more diverse RPG gaming this next year, provided we can all continue to safely gather around the gaming tables.