We have a fantastic lineup of blogs planned for 2024 at Gathering Games. We're looking forward to bringing you more useful content, in-depth reviews of great and anticipated games alongside our well-curated lists. We hope to spark your interest and introduce you to new games within this fantastic hobby of ours!
I could not, however, start the year without looking back on some of the best board games we played in 2023. I tried to balance this list with games newly released in 2023 and games I just really enjoyed playing last year. Partly as it made me realise that there are so many games released last year that I just didn’t get round to playing. With games like Apiary by Stonemaier games and Thunder Road from Restoration Games high on my wish list to try this year.
Like our previous list I have tried to include a balance of game types, mechanics and styles to try and bring something for everyone, but I couldn’t list them all! So, in no particular order, these are some of the games I played and enjoyed most in 2023. Games that I think you should check out!
Table of Contents
Unmatched: Tales to Amaze
Categories: Co-operative, Hand management, Miniatures, Combat, Frustratingly Big Monsters Terrorising Your Plans
Number of players: 1-4
Playing time: 20-60 mins
Ages: 9+
Unmatched is a series of games that I have increasingly enjoyed playing over the last couple of years. It is a miniatures duelling game featuring fighters from books, films, myths, legends, comics and more. Heroes like King Arthur or Medusa, Big Foot, the T-rex out of Jurassic Park, Daredevil and his Marvel friends, Red Riding Hood or even the legend that is Bruce Lee! Each hero has a unique deck of 30 cards that compliments them and helps create their own style of play. Something I think they have done well; they all give you a different gaming experience. There are so many standalone sets, but each can be mixed and matched to create new and interesting games.
Tales to Amaze brings a new take on the fantastic Unmatched series as it introduces a cooperative experience where those same heroes, that were previously duelling it out, work together to defeat a villain before they achieve their evil objectives. For example, in one game I played against Mothman, we had to bring him down before he destroyed several bridges on the board in a classic monster movie style.
This new game comes with 4 new heroes to choose from who must work together using their unique playstyle and abilities to stop that from happening. On your turn you may take 2 actions from a possible 3: manoeuvre (draw a card and optionally move your fighters round the board), scheme (Play a scheme card which gives an instant effect) or attack (play an attack card on an opponent). Where normally you would be trying to outwit another player now you are up against a very clever AI system in which the villain will react and take turns based on their own unique deck of cards. It is incredible how many times you make a move to attack the villain and draw a card from their deck like they had planned just for that very strategy!
The villains don't come alone either. Each game you will face a villain aided by a number of possible minions each with their own play style and supporting roles.
The villain mechanic is well designed and you feel like you are having to outwit the game as you try to work together to bring them down. The game comes with 2 villains and 7 possible minions to fight against. Tales to Amaze doesn't limit you to the 4 brilliant heroes that the game comes with. Just like previous versions of the game you can bring in any combination of heroes from the Unmatched series. So, if you want to, King Arthur can create a crack squad of professionals including Dracula, Bruce Lee and that clever Velociraptor with all its door opening cunning!
Tales to Amaze is a brilliant game, fiercely difficult at times as you come agonizingly close only to see that last bridge fall, but a game that will keep you coming back to try again. One of my games of the year!
Unmatched Adventures: Tales To Amaze
£46.95
£59.99
Description Unmatched Adventures: Tales to Amaze is a new way to enjoy the Unmatched series of hero duels, now with cooperative gameplay! This game is inspired by the pulp stories, legends, and myths of the 20th century.In this game, you… read more
Run
Categories: Hidden Movement, Deduction, Gadgets, Screens to Hide Behind, Tense
Players: 2
Playing time: 10-30 mins
Ages: 14+
When I saw this on the shelves of Gathering Games, I was drawn to it straight away, having really enjoyed other hidden movement games like Specter Ops!
In Run, you play the part of either a runner – fleeing a crime scene, or a dispatcher hunting for the criminal! As the runner you must find 3 gadgets distributed around the board then reach a safe house and, of course, the dispatcher's goal is to locate you and hit you twice and take you down!
The game has a clever system, both players have an identical board behind a screen. The runner starts the game on one of 8 allocated points (the crime scene), the dispatcher knows this information but then the runner has two secret moves to start the game before the dispatcher comes looking. Each turn the runner makes a move playing a movement action tile to the evidence board, these are either silent, represented by a question mark on the board or a loud move in which case they will reveal more information to the dispatcher, a direction, type of move or gadget! You have to be careful, these movement tiles are limited, use too many and you become exhausted, stuck limping, loudly, towards a safehouse.
On their turn, the dispatcher has 5 main actions available which will help them scan areas of the board or try to catch the runner. As a nice touch the Dispatcher is provided with a dry wipe pen and can make notes on the evidence board, they also have a stack of tracking cubes which help them try and plot possible locations on the board.
This is a great, fun, 2 player experience which will find you nervously selecting moves as you try and outwit the dispatcher OR in my experience as the dispatcher, left scratching your head, as your logically, well worked out stun gun, hits an empty space again. There is nothing like watching your opponent grin at you realising you have no idea where they are. I would highly recommend this game!
Run
£38.99
Description RUN is a quick, tense, hidden movement game of cat-and-mouse. One player is the Runner, who is navigating a city skyline and using gadgets. Pursing him is the Dispatcher, sending her helicopter and patrol cars to hunt him down.… read more
Star Wars: The Deckbuilding Game
Categories: Deck Building, 2 Players, Star Wars, Card Synergy, Imperial Scum
Players: 2
Play time: 30 mins
Ages: 12+
As mentioned in a previous blog I am quite a fan of deck builders so when a new Star Wars deckbuilding game was launched in 2023, I was excited to pick it up. Like many the theme was a real pull for me.
The game follows the classic deckbuilding model seeing both players start the game with an identical deck of 10 cards – though one has Imperial and one Rebel themed starter cards. As the game goes on you can buy new cards from a central marketplace called the galaxy row, these cards are far stronger than your starting cards and bring all kinds of options and strategies to play the game.
The objective of the game is to defeat your opponent's bases severely damaging their strength in the galaxy. Each player starts the game with a smaller deck of base cards, these are all locations from the Star Wars universe and bring you unique additional abilities throughout the game. Add enough damage however and they go up like a fireworks party over Endor! The first player to destroy 3 of their opponents bases wins, though this can be increased to give you a longer game and believe me it can suddenly feel quick.
Star Wars: The Deckbuilding Game has a couple of twists on the classic deck builder, all cards in the game fit into 3 factions: Imperial, Rebel or Neutral and this is significant as you can only purchase / recruit cards from your own or the neutral faction. This can lead to slightly frustrating moments when the Galaxy Row seems nearly entirely populated with your opponent's cards. You can however attack/sabotage your opponent's cards in the galaxy row instead of targeting their base, not only removing them from the game, stopping your opponent gaining access to them but providing you with rewards for doing so which is a nice touch.
No Star Wars game would be complete without access to the Force and alongside the Galaxy Row you will unfold a force tracker. Throughout the game certain cards will allow you to manipulate the Force towards your side which can unlock enhanced abilities on cards and provide you with extra resources to buy new cards.
I have really enjoyed this game as a fast 2 player deckbuilding game that is easy to pick up and teach and provides lots of replay ability as you try new combinations of cards and new strategies to win the game. With a decent shorter playing time you will find yourself saying “one more game?” far too often!
Star Wars: The Deckbuilding Game
£31.99
£37.99
Description The Rebel Alliance fights valiantly against the tyranny of the Galactic Empire. Each new victory brings the Rebels hope, and each heroic sacrifice strengthens their resolve. Still, the Empire’s resources are vast, and the firepower of its Empire Navy… read more
Cascadia
Categories: Drafting, Tile Placement, Wildlife, Variable End Game Scoring, Salmon
Players: 1 – 4
Play time: 30-45 mins
Ages: 8+
Cascadia is a beautiful game about creating habitats and placing animal tokens to meet different scoring criteria.
You start the game with 3 hexagonal habitat tiles showing the 5 different habitats available to you in the game. Each tile you draft depicts 1 or 2 terrain types and as you add these to your tiles you will try and match up terrain to create lovely continuous habitats to add your animal tokens to. Each tile has between 1-3 animal symbols on it, from the 5 different animal symbols in the game, showing you which animals can be placed there. You can only place one animal token on each tile.
On your turn in Cascadia, you will draft a tile and wildlife token that have been randomly paired together in frustratingly unhelpful combinations overall, having to make difficult choices on which terrain tile would fit best in your set or which animals do you need to fulfil the scoring criteria you were working towards! Inevitably only to watch the bear you so desperately needed be picked up almost without care by the player sat next to you. Almost like they knew you wanted it – which they of course probably did! Throughout the game you can pick up nature tokens allowing you to manipulate the draft, choosing tiles and tokens not paired to each other or even wiping the draft and starting again.
In Cascadia, each family of animals scores differently. Your bears like to come in pairs (2 bear tokens on adjoining terrain pieces) but don't want to be near another pair of bears. Eagles are solitary animals so cannot be placed near another eagle whilst your foxes, the extroverts of the group (in Cascadia) like to surround themselves with as many unique other animals as they can! So, as you build your terrain types up and draft your animal tokens you will be trying to plan out the perfect layout to maximise the points scored. You will also gain points for your largest continuous sections of each terrain at the end of the game.
Cascadia is a simple game to pick up but such a clever game to play as you try and unlock the puzzle in front of you and think 3 steps ahead as you build your terrain. Each family of animals also has multiple scoring options chosen at the start of the game meaning you can come back to it again and again. I have enjoyed this game immensely every time I have played it.
If you own Cascadia already, why not check out the expansion Cascadia: Landmarks?
Cascadia
£32.99
£39.99
Description Cascadia is a puzzly tile-laying and token-drafting game featuring the habitats and wildlife of the Pacific Northwest. In the game, you take turns building out your own terrain area and populating it with wildlife. You start with three hexagonal habitat… read more
Next Station Tokyo
Categories: Flip & Write, Small Footprint, Great Solo, Subway Planning, Variable End Game Scoring
Players: 1-4
Play time: 25 mins
Ages: 8+
If you read my gift ideas article before Christmas, you will have seen me recommend Next Station London a fantastic small footprint flip and write game! If you have not read the article, you have missed out but can find the link HERE.
I was fortunate enough to be bought a copy of Next Station Tokyo, the next game in the next station series, and couldn't wait to try it.
Next Station Tokyo, like London before it, is a flip and write game. Each turn you will flip a card and depending on what choice you make you will then draw onto the subway map provided. The concept sees you called into to tackle future challenges faced by tourism in Tokyo by redesigning the subway network. At the start of the game each player is given a map populated by subway stations and city districts as well as dotted lines representing potential subway routes. On the map you will also find pre completed the central loop line as this is a key subway line in Tokyo. You will need to connect with it as best you can to optimise your routes across the city.
The gameplay is simple and easy to pick up. Each station on the map is represented by one of 4 symbols: Triangle, Square, Circle and Pentagon including 4 starting stations. The starting stations each have their own colour: purple, blue, pink and brown and at the start of the game you will be dealt (randomly given) a pencil in one of those 4 colours, this shows you which station you start your first route from! At the end of each round, you simply pass the pencils to the player on your left and start again from a new starting station!
The round begins by flipping over the top card of the station deck, revealing one of the symbols listed above. This will then allow you to connect your starting station to a station of that matching symbol. You carry on until all the cards have been flipped over or you reveal your 5th Subway card. As simple as it sounds this will provide you with decisions on which way to take your line or how to connect the most districts with your line. Each line is scored for how many districts it passes through times by the number of highest number of stations you have connected in any one district. You have to be careful how you plan your routes as all too often you find out later that you have blocked yourself with a previous line stopping a possibly game winning route! On top of this you score points for interchanges where different subway lines meet, tourist stamps and objective cards!
This is another great game with a small footprint so you can play it anywhere just throw into a bag! With a 25-minute play time, from experience, it can easily be played on a lunch break! Another great game from Blue Orange games.
Next Station Tokyo
£12.99
£14.99
Description The city of Tokyo needs you to create a new subway network ! Connect to the green central loop line as best you can. Optimise your interchanges and collect as many Tourist Stamps as possible across the city! Contents… read more
Clank Catacombs
Categories: Deck building, Tile Placement, Dungeon Explorer, Treasure Hunting, Big Scary Dragon
Players: 2-4
Play time: 45 – 90 mins
Ages: 13+
Clank has been in my top 5 games for a long time and Dire Wolf's latest in the series, Clank Catacombs, was a fantastic new take on the game with completely new game play and a unique experience every time!
In Clank Catacombs you have 2 aims. Firstly, to explore the Dungeon, retrieve one of the valuable artefacts hidden in there and escape the dragon safe and sound. Secondly, to accumulate more points than your fellow adventurers and be hailed as the greatest thief in the realm!
Clank Catacombs is a deck builder much like Star Wars The Deckbuilding Game I talked about above but with some key differences! You each start the game with a small identical deck of cards which enables you to move around the dungeon, fight monsters and provides you with the currency to purchase new stronger cards from a dungeon row. In Clank though, as well as enhanced cards, monsters will also appear in the market that you can defeat for rewards! So much like many deck builders but in Clank Catacombs the key difference is you will be negotiating a dungeon, using the cards you play for movement points and negotiating the obstacles you face!
The clever thing in this game is there is no board, as you progress you will reveal dungeon tiles from a stack, connecting pathways, revealing rooms and hidden secrets, treasure and bonuses to pick up. This means that no 2 games of Clank Catacombs will be the same and can create some fantastic experiences.
Through the game, danger comes from the “clank”, the noise you make in the dungeon that attracts the attention of the dragon! As you move around, make certain moves, play certain cards you will be asked to add a number of “clank” or your coloured cubes to the dragon bag mixed with cubes from your opponents and neutral cubes. At certain trigger points a dragon attack will be called and you will watch as a set number of cubes (that increases as the game goes on) are pulled from the bag and any of your colour represent damage you have taken! This can be one of those times when no matter how many cubes your opponent has in the bag you will watch in shock as 5 of yours are pulled in a row!
This is a fantastic game of strategy and painful decisions as you decide whether to venture further or grab the first artefact you find and head for the tavern! Highly recommend this game!
Clank! Catacombs
£53.99
£59.99
Description The catacombs of the skeletal dragon Umbrok Vessna are mysterious and dangerous. Portals transport you all around the dungeon depths. Wayshrines offer vast riches to intrepid explorers. Prisoners are counting on you to free them. Ghosts, once disturbed, may… read more
Ticket To Ride: Legends Of The West
Categories: Legacy Game, Hand Management, Route Building, Trains, Set Collection, Campaign, Tiny Trains
Players: 2-5
Play time: 20-90 mins
Ages: 10+
Ticket To Ride has been a staple for board game fans for many years now, bringing an easy to approach game of set collection and building train routes across various maps and countries!
In Ticket To Ride you are trying to complete tickets (objectives) by completing a route between 2 cities, usually this will involve completing lots of small interconnecting routes across the board to complete one much longer journey.
The routes on the board are depicted by coloured train spaces of varying length and to be able to put your awesome train carriages down on those spaces you have to collect the matching train cards. For example, if you wanted to create a route between 2 cities and the map showed 2 red train spaces, you would have to collect 2 red train cards in order to complete the route. The game is a classic push your luck game in which you are drawing from the deck or from the row of face up train cards all the time whilst trying to map out the route across the board. The real challenge comes in trying to do this before your opponent uses the route you were working towards and causes you to plan a frustratingly longer work around! The base game is easy to learn and great fun to play.
Ticket To Ride: Legends Of The West is the latest in a growing genre of “legacy” games in which the game changes as you work through a campaign. Decisions you make and in game choices can completely change the course of the game. Often this can involve changing boards, cards and even rules as you work your way through the campaign and complete games.
The beauty of legacy games is that as the game develops as new information is revealed and the game is adapted in unique ways so I don't want to give away anything that will spoil the game for you.
In Legends Of The West, what I can tell you is that you are managing a North American railway company to wealth and fortune. There will be unexpected events along the way that you need negotiate and overcome, you will be aiming to fill your vault with earnings. As you progress you will open frontier boxes that will unlock rules and new content along the way.
Like the base game this is an easy game to learn but provides a much deeper game with a narrative story that will leave you excited for the next game. When you finish the 12 campaign games you end up with a completely unique version of ticket to ride that you can continue to enjoy for ever more! If you enjoy legacy games, you’ll want to dip your toes in this is a fantastic game!
Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West
£79.99
£99.99
Description Are you ready to become a part of the history of your favourite train game and discover the vision of Rob Daviau, Matt Leacock and Alan R. Moon? Ticket to Ride® Legacy: Legends of the West invites you to… read more
Ancient Knowledge
Categories: Engine Building, Drafting, Hand Management, Historical, Monuments, Old Stuff
Players: 2-4
Play time: 75 mins
Ages: 12+
Ancient Knowledge is one of those games I had just not heard much about. When you dig down, it is an easy to learn tableau builder that brings a fresh approach to that game mechanic.
In Ancient knowledge you are building monuments and gaining artefacts to pass on your knowledge but as time moves by you must retrieve the ancient knowledge before the monument falls into decline and is lost forever!
If you have played great tableau builders like Terraforming Mars or Race For The Galaxy or even Ark Nova you will know what it's like to continue adding great cards to your tableau, increasing synergy and abilities to the point where it becomes a bit unwieldy! In Ancient knowledge you play monuments to your timeline – you build them at a point in time (one of 6 spaces) on your civilisation board. Like many tableau builders these bring a variety of things, end game points, instant bonuses, boosts to cards, set collection possibilities as well as added end game scoring options! When you play these monuments, each one will have a number of ancient knowledge tokens on them and this is important, you need to try and retrieve the knowledge tokens off those monuments before they go into decline or that knowledge will be lost forever – more importantly it will score you minus points! I love this about the game a sense of time passing and the monuments crumbling away to nothing. Each turn, when you get to the decline phase you move your monument 1 space to the left towards decline, once a monument goes into decline it still scores you end game points, but its powers are lost forever!
Ancient Knowledge is a very simple game to learn. In fact, you can almost do this off the great player aid alone. Your turn consists of an action phase where you can take 2 actions from those available including drawing cards, erecting monuments, playing artefacts, removing knowledge tokens and taking technology cards, if you meet the criteria. Once you have taken your actions you complete the timeline phase where you activate your timeline, gaining any bonuses from your monuments or artefacts on your board, seeing the fruit from your carefully planned strategy. Finally, the decline phase, the part of the game where I think you get a really original take on the genre, where your monuments slowly start to crumble into the past. This also triggers the game end. When a player has 14 monuments in their decline pile the end game is triggered and the points are tallied up! I have seen some suggestions online that this is an area where you can tailor the game and reduce the number of cards, making the game a bit shorter, but I have not personally tried that!
This is a great game probably best at 2-3 players that brings a new spin on a great game mechanic, everyone I have spoken to about this have really enjoyed it as well. Don't let this one slide past you into decline (see what I did there). I would definitely recommend picking up Ancient Knowledge!
Ancient Knowledge
£31.99
£39.99
Description Heirs to an exceptional knowledge that has survived the ages, it is now up to you to preserve the vestige of your civilization. Ancient Knowledge is a strategic card game in which you erect monuments and build artefacts to… read more
Special Mentions
I wanted to give special mention to 2 more games that I really enjoyed in 2023 and have both become favourites in my collection but I have already spoken about in previous blogs. So rather than repeat that content I am going to give them a brief mention and link you back to those articles (which is also a great way of getting you to read other instalments of the blog!)
Sky Team
Sky Team is a fantastic 2 player co-operative game in which you play the part of a pilot and co-pilot trying to land your plane in a variety of challenging scenarios! To read more on this fantastic game you can read the blog HERE.
Dune Imperium: Uprising
I enjoyed this game so much we decided to give it a full review! Dune Imperium Uprising is a brilliant deck builder / worker placement hybrid that has you competing for glory on the planet Arrakis (also called Dune). This has quickly become one of my favourite games and you can read the full review HERE.
Finally
Once again, I hope this list has been interesting and even encouraged you to have a look at some of the games mentioned above, you can find links to all of them on our website. As always at Gathering Games we love to play games and we love to talk about games we play, so please, if you have any questions or if you want any more recommendations get in touch with us. If you want to stay up to date with our news and these great blogs (If I do say so myself) why not subscribe to our mailing list where you also get a little discount code to say thank you.
I also want to take a moment to thank everyone that has engaged with Gathering Games in 2023 you are all awesome and the reason we are here.
Check out our full range of board games here at Gathering Games.
