The Best Board Games of 2024

Happy New Year from all of us here at Gathering Games, and what better way to start our 2025 blog series than with a look back at our list of the best games we played that were released in 2024?

Obviously, this is from our perspective, and as I haven't managed to play all the games I wanted to, there may still be some brilliant games you may find missing. I have a hit list of the games I still want to play, and I will definitely reference a few games later on that I think would have made the list if I had gotten them to the table! 

I am going to start the list with one of the games I reviewed towards the end of the year and one of my absolute favourites of 2024, a game that is now firmly in my collection.

Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-Earth

Lord of the Rings: Duel For Middle-Earth Board Game Box Art

Mechanics: 2-player, card drafting, tableau builder, area control, set collection, multiple win conditions, running away from Nazgul, nasty hobbitses
Player Count: 2
Play Time: 30 mins
Ages: 10+

When Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-Earth came out, it raised a few questions, the most important of which was: is this just a reskin of 7 Wonders: Duel?

You would have been forgiven for asking as it’s designed by the same people and, at first glance, a very similar game. The quick answer is no.

Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-Earth is a brilliant 2-player game inspired by 7 Wonders: Duel, but the changes that have been made  make it a better game, in my opinion.

The game utilises the drafting mechanics that we saw in 7 Wonders: Duel. Players take turns to draw from the available chapter cards on the table, cleverly laid out in a predetermined pattern so that not all cards are accessible - you can only draw an uncovered card.

Players can either pay the cost and play the card in front of them or discard the card for gold. These chapter cards have different uses, ranging from resource cards that enable you to purchase higher value cards, military-based cards that enable you to deploy units to the board,  and alliance cards that enable you to collect faction symbols to unlock special bonus abilities.

As well as Chapter cards, you can use your resources to build landmarks, which provide a fortress on the region board and special additional bonuses to help you achieve your strategy.

There are improvements to the original game, simplifying some of the mechanics and adding new and improved elements, but the key differences are found in your game goals and victory conditions.

In Duel for Middle-Earth, they have introduced a new area control board featuring seven regions of Middle-Earth, which gives a really nice but simple conflict element.

Each player has a supply of units and fortresses, and the first player to have a presence in each region wins!

Secondly, There is a nicely designed ring track in which, as the fellowship, you are trying to take the ring to the end, Mount Doom, to achieve victory.

As Sauron, you will send your ring wraiths after the fellowship, winning the game if you ever catch them before the end.

Finally, you can win the game if you collect a symbol for each of the six factions in the game, uniting the races of Middle Earth to your cause. 

Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-Earth is a fantastic game of strategy, quick to play and easy to learn and a real hit for us in 2024. Read our full review of Duel for Middle-Earth here.

Score

9 out of 10

The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-Earth

£22.99 £27.99

Description A dark rumour rises from Mordor. The Eye turns to Middle-earth. The hour has come. The Fellowship is reunited. The Heroes prepare for battle. In Duel for Middle-earth, you’ll have to choose sides. Play as the Fellowship of the… read more

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Harmonies

Harmonies Box Art

Mechanics: Open drafting, pattern building, tile placement, card drafting, multiple scoring opportunities, nature, animals, frustrating ‘why did I place those there’ moments
Players Count: 1-4
Best at: 2-3
Play Time: 30 - 45 mins
Ages: 10+

I was late to try Harmonies in 2024. I heard really positive reviews, and I can now confirm the hype was absolutely justified.

Harmonies is a game about creating habitats on your player board in order to attract different animals, each having their own unique terrain requirement.

It is beautifully designed both in gameplay and artwork, with really nice wooden tokens.

Harmonies is played by collecting and placing coloured terrain tokens on your board. This creates the unique patterns you need to attract animals.

There are 5 types of tokens that can be used to create mountains, buildings, water, trees and fields, each with their own placement rules and scoring criteria.

The five available tokens in Harmonies

Sometimes, you need to combine tokens, which create a habitat. For example, a building is made up of a red token stacked on top of a grey, brown or red token. A tree can be 3 different levels with a combination of brown and green tokens. A mountain can be up to 3 grey tokens stacked on top of each other.

The central board has 5 spaces and the tokens are randomly drawn from a bag, placing three on each space. On your turn, you must choose any one space and use all 3 of the tokens, placing them immediately on your board.

Central board in Harmonies

The game comes with 32 different animal cards, each depicting a unique habitat. A combination of those mountains and trees, for example.

Animal cards in Harmonies

Once you have created the right habitat on your board, you can take an animal cube and place it as shown on the card.

The tokens can be used in multiple patterns, but only one animal can be placed on each space. You score each animal card depending on how many animal cubes you have placed, each card scoring completely differently.

This is a brilliantly clever game of difficult choices and placement frustration. It’s simple and really well-designed.

Only 5 animals are revealed at any one time, creating a huge amount of replayability. Each animal card inspires different patterns and some combine better than others.

As a card is taken from the row, a new one is placed, bringing with it the realisation that the mountain range you have just created is no longer going to help you attract animals to your board.

The game is won by the player with the most points scored by your terrain and the animals placed on your board.

Harmonies is a beautiful abstract board game, bringing lovely challenges and puzzles as you work out how best to place your tokens and maximise your habitat.

I cannot recommend Harmonies enough, and it is definitely one of my games of the year.

Score

8 out of 10

Harmonies

£27.99 £33.99

Description In Harmonies, you will create beautiful landscapes by placing colored tiles. These tiles will create territories for animals and will bring them in to settle in your tiny world! Tactically combine your landscapes and animals to earn the most… read more

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Arcs

Arcs Box Art

Mechanics: Trick taking, hand management, area majority, card-driven actions, space combat, dice rolling, variable scoring mechanisms, multiple strategies, smiling whilst you capture your opponent's spaces ships as trophies, shooty shooty pew pew
Players Count: 2-4
Best at: 4
Play Time: 60 - 120 mins
Ages: 14+

Arcs landed in 2024 with a huge buzz, from the creators of the incredibly popular asymmetric woodland conflict game Root.

Arcs is a brilliantly designed space opera-style game with a unique action selection twist. In Arcs players are officials from a decaying empire vying for dominance through battle, gathering resources or influence over the court.

Arcs is played on a central map featuring 6 clusters, each with 4 systems, 3 planets and one gate.

Arcs Board

The map is designed so that systems are only adjacent to others they share a border with and clusters to each other through the gate. This means you can try to control certain areas of the map, build on planets, loot resources and create chaos in battle.

At the heart of the game is a “trick-taking” inspired action selection system.

The action deck is 28 cards in 4 suits numbered 1-7 (for a 3-4 player game, you only use 2-6 for a 2 player game). Each suit represents a different combination of actions that can be performed when you play the card, but the number determines initiative.

Action cards in Arcs

Each card also has a number of pips, showing how many times you can perform one of those actions. Normally the lower the number, the higher the pips, but the less chance of you following on or gaining initiative. 

One of the suits is “Aggression” which allows you to Battle, Move or Secure. If you played a card with 3 pips on it, you could do any combination of these actions up to 3 times. The “Construction” suit allows you to build or repair as another example.

The player with the initiative plays the first card and takes their actions. The remaining players can follow suit or “Surpass” if they have a higher numbered card, OR they can copy the action card - play any action card face down to take one action of the lead card.

Finally, they can “Pivot” - play another suit but only take one action! Once everyone has taken their turn, you check for initiative, which can either be seized or taken by the player who surpassed with the highest number card. 

Having the initiative can be really key, as leading a trick allows you to control the type of actions played and force others to potentially waste cards or play high-value cards to get the most from their turn.

Arcs Player Board

The initiative is also key for being able to declare ambitions. In each round, up to 3 ambitions can be declared. This is the way you score points! When you play that lead card, before you take your actions, you can choose to declare the ambition on that lead card. Each card in the deck has a different ambition marked on it. To declare, you take the ambition token and lay it across the card, covering up the card value and replacing it with a 0. This means that in declaring an ambition, the trade-off is you give more options to your opponents to follow suit and maximise the efficiency of their turn. 

If the Warlord is declared, the player with the most trophies (destroyed ships) wins the points at the end of the round.

If the Tycoon is declared, it's the player with the most fuel or material icons and so on. Other ambitions have you focus on collecting types of symbols or capturing enemy agents!

There is so much strategy in this game. The card-driven action selection mechanic means that, although you can plan your turns ahead, if you haven't got the action cards required, you will need to be able to adapt and develop your strategy on the hoof!

The different types of ambitions provide real variation in strategy. Do you focus on building cities and taxing them for resources or building a fleet to go after trophies?

You can also gain guild cards by influencing them in the court. These provide symbols towards ambitions as well as useful abilities.

Guild cards in Arcs

Arcs is brilliant, bringing you that space opera-style game, but in around 2 hours. so far easier to get to the table and with so much replayability. The expansions add asymmetric leaders and factions and even a large campaign to the game, something I can not wait to try! Arcs is a great addition to the collection.

Arcs

£44.75 £47.99

Description Long ago, the Reach thrived. But our ancestors failed us, and I fear we’re no better. As we wrestle over the galaxy’s edge, can we break the cycle? Can we build something new? Arcs is a sharp sci-fi strategy… read more

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Andromeda's Edge

This segment was written by Chris Dixon

Andromeda's Edge Box Art

Mechanics: Worker placement, hand management, space combat, dice rolling, asymmetric, lots of aliens
Player Count: 2 - 4
Best at: 4
Play Time: 80 - 160 mins
Ages: 14+

Andromedas Edge is another game that has caused a real stir, an epic space-themed, worker placement, euro style game, though with a healthy dose of space combat thrown in. 

Andromedas Edge, mechanically inspired by its fantasy predecessor Dwellings of Everdale, sees you leading one of 18 different alien factions, each with its own unique strengths and strategies.

Some focus on building, whilst others might focus on combat. Some even benefit from losing combat in order to utilise the scrapyard. This variety brings so much replayability.

The core mechanic of the game is based around launching or retrieving your ships. You launch your ships to either bases or planets on the board.

Andromeda's Edge Board

Planets can bring you moons, which can be used for the resources pictured on them or as modules that can be activated later. You can even use them in your tactical operations slot to bring benefits to your ships in battle.

There are 6 Alliance Base Tiles to visit: Monolith of Agents, Trade Hub, Maximus Field, Odessa Field, Shipyard and Development Office. Some allow the trade of resources or the purchase of ‘modules’ for your main base. Shipyard allows the repair and building of ships and the development of offices for the building of Developments on planets.

Retrieving your ships allows you to activate modules you purchased for your base, which can bring other benefits, like resources.

The key mechanism when you retrieve your ships is that you have to retrieve all ships at the same time.

Andromeda's Edge Player Board

Through the game, you can further construct your base however you like. Ultimately, this becomes your resource engine.

Each coloured module represents four of the five tracks on the board. You advance each of them for each module you purchase.

The fifth track is based on successful combat. You can choose which of the tracks to specialise in. They give a range of benefits and victory points.

Usually, your alien faction lends itself to certain tech paths to follow. The tech paths also lend to building ‘Developments’ on planets, which hold strategic value in battle and give victory points.

Combat is streamlined using a six-sided die, with the highest roller being the winner. There are four types of ships, with one set upgrade for each type and a ‘special upgrade’ based on your faction's strength. While the upgrade process is not as modular as some other space games, it works well and speeds up the game.

Andromeda’s Edge is an amazing achievement of intelligent worker/ship placement combined with the fun of building/upgrading spaceships and attacking your friends.

It marries a Euro game with a space combat and area control game brilliantly, and despite a lengthy setup, it's brilliant fun.

It also has a fantastic ‘AI’ mechanic of enemy ships spawning in the game and an opponent called ‘Unity’ for those after a single-player or team-based experience with a friend.

For me, it was the best new game of 2024.

Score

9 out of 10

Andromeda's Edge

£61.99 £67.49

Description Behold, Andromeda’s Edge A dazzling, uncharted region of space on the edge of the Andromeda galaxy. Littered with the modular debris of the precursor civilization, patrolled by malicious extragalactic raiders, and bordered by dense nebulae, The Edge is a… read more

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Wyrmspan

Wyrmspan box art

Categories: Hand management, engine builder, objective-based scoring, card combinations, variable points scoring, dragons (lots of them)
Number of players: 1-5
Best at: 3
Typical game time: 90 mins
Age rating: 14+

When Wyrmspan was announced, it probably achieved the record for the most memes generated by an anticipated board game as ‘memespan’ took hold.

Wingspan, its predecessor, has a huge following of fans, as it combines an excellent engine-builder-style game with a beautiful bird-based theme. Did Wyrmspan bring more than just the same game but with dragons?

Wyrmspan was inspired by the mechanics and gameplay of Wingspan, but with 16+ unique elements. Make no mistake. This is a different game.

If you are a fan of Wingspan, this game will feel familiar and quicker to pick up, but with tweaks, improvements, and new ways to play, it will improve on the original in many ways. You can tell they took the learnings of their previous game and built these in from the word “go”.

The theme will divide people. Thematically, dragons did grab my attention more than birds, so I was intrigued to try it. Either way, they took something good and made it better when they brought out Wyrmspan.

Dragon cards from Wyrmspan

The core concept of Wyrmspan is to attract/entice dragons into your cave system. This brings you victory points, helps to fulfil criteria on objectives, and improves the action efficiency when you explore your caves.

Essentially, you are creating an engine that improves as you add dragons to the tableau and benefit from their additional abilities.

This creates some really interesting choices, as you may have a number of reasons to select a dragon. It may have a great ability but does not fulfil the criteria you are looking for in an objective. It might come loaded with points, but otherwise, it takes up space in the engine.

Wait too long, though, and the perfect dragon may never come.

One of the first key differences is that only the first space in each cave is available. You will have to excavate in order to entice any additional dragons to your caves.

The caves are really significant in Wyrmspan. Excavating a cave and enticing a new dragon does not only improve your engine and achieve your goals, but it also improves the exploration action, as each dragon placed in a cave means you can explore further.

Wyrmspan player boards and game boards

Each time you explore the cave system you gain all the bonuses along the bottom of the caves with dragons in them. This is one of the main ways to gain the resources you require to attract new dragons, so action efficiency is key here!

You start each round with 6 coins. These determine how many actions you can take.

Each action (excavating a cave space, enticing new dragons or sending an explorer into one of the 3 caves) normally has a cost of one coin. Some more valuable dragons can also cost a coin, meaning you could be sacrificing an action in order to place a strong dragon card.

There are ways to temporarily increase your coins and extend your turn.

Something new to Wyrmspan is the Dragon Guild. As you explore your caves, one of the bonuses you can trigger is to move your piece on the guild. It is essentially a ‘Rondel’ mechanic; every time it triggers, you move one space along the track, and each space provides you with additional bonuses. This is also another way to gain victory points!

Wyrmspan is played over 4 rounds, each having its own scoring objective picked at random during setup. These objectives help you plan and decide on how you play the game, the types of dragons you will entice etc.

Speckled eggs from Wyrmspan

At the end of the 4th round, the player with the most victory points wins. Victory points come from dragons, markers on the Dragon Guild, end-game scoring on certain dragons, dragon eggs and more.

This is a game with a lot of different strategies. There are many ways to score points, as it has a large dragon deck, multiple-round scoring objectives and Dragon Guild options. This results in a huge amount of replayability.

I really enjoyed Wyrmspan. I felt it brought something new to the previous game. I loved the theme, and the components are beautifully designed. This was another hit of 2024 for me.

Read our full review of Wyrmspan here.

Score

8 out of 10

Wyrmspan

£44.99 £54.99

Description Welcome to Wyrmspan, a world where majestic dragons soar across the sky in a dazzling array of colours and shapes. You are a novice dracologist who has discovered a hidden labyrinth on your property. Explore the ancient tunnels and… read more

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Daybreak

Daybreak box art

Mechanics: cooperative, tableau builder, hand management, simultaneous action selection, multiple card tags, planting trees, terrifying carbon production, hopelessly watching the temperature rise
Player Count: 1-4
Best at: 2
Play Time: 60 - 90 mins
Ages: 10+

When Daybreak arrived on the scene earlier in 2024, it came with a lot of interest. From the game designer Matt Leacock, creator of the very popular pandemic series, Daybreak is a cooperative board game focused on climate change that was always going to inspire interest and opinion.

In Daybreak, you take on the role of one of the world powers trying to work collaboratively to stop, and maybe even reverse, climate change - an idealistic view!

Daybreak game board

How can you work together to reduce carbon emissions, negotiate world crises and create more green sources of energy?

Before we look at the question of how and essentially how the game is played, it's worth noting the effort gone into the game design.

Daybreak doesn’t only focus on climate change but has made a commitment to sustainability in its game design. No plastics used in the game. Storage trays made of biodegradable materials. No textiles. And all wood 100% FSC certified. On top of that, the art is great, and the components are of high quality.

Daybreak features 4 world powers: America, Europe, China and the rest of the world! Each power has its own player board and set-up card, which tells you how much dirty/green energy you produce, followed by the different emission tokens for your world power - transportation, industry, and agriculture, just as a few examples.

Each dirty energy and emission token produces one carbon per turn, which, when you first stack it on the board, can be quite a sobering moment!

Tree and ocean tokens in Daybreak

Trees and oceans in the game are some of the ways you can sequester this carbon, essentially removing it from the stack.

You win the game when you produce less carbon than you have the capacity to get rid of, and you enter into a drawdown.

Too much carbon and the temperature starts to rise. This is one of the ways you can lose the game. If you ever reach an increase of 2 degrees, that is an immediate failed mission.

Each world power begins the game with 5 starter local projects. In each turn, you are dealt additional project cards that can be used as resources to activate projects, start new projects or support global initiatives.

The cards feature a really clever tag system, similar to Terraforming Mars or Ark Nova. These tags can be used to enhance local projects by playing them behind other projects and creating a stack of cards.

Daybreak player board

Whenever you start new projects, you place them on top of one of your 5 stacks, meaning that the previous project is no longer available. But the new project comes preloaded with all the previous tags played. This can create brilliant chain effects or, if played well, really powerful projects.

Daybreak is a brilliant game of tough choices. How can I best use the projects I have available to me? Which tags do I need to collect to enhance what I am doing?

The crux of the game is aiming to reduce your emission tokens through your local projects whilst growing the resilience of your communities and trying to increase carbon-capturing initiatives.

There are only so many options you have each turn, but through clever action efficiency, you can use and reuse project stacks to the maximum as you work together to make a difference.

If you enjoy a cooperative game with a difference, Daybreak is excellent. It brings challenge and strategy as you negotiate another crisis and plant some more trees. This is a game I have really enjoyed during 2024.

Read our full review of Daybreak here.

Score

8 out of 10

Daybreak

£49.75 £59.99

Description Daybreak is a cooperative board game about stopping climate change. It presents a hopeful vision of the near future, where you get to build the mind-blowing technologies and resilient societies we need to save the planet. Daybreak is designed… read more

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Civolution

This segment was written by Luke Saxby

Civolution Box Art

Mechanics: Competitive, civilisation management, area control, hand management, dice rolling, resource management, mild engine building, open drafting, variable set-up, tribal warfare, never having enough food
Players Count: 1-4
Best at: 2-3
Play Time: 90-180 mins
Ages: 14+

Civolution arrived in late 2024 to seemingly little fanfare, which is surprising considering it’s a Stefan Feld game.

Civolution is a hybrid worker placement, hand and resource management game where players are students at the Technical Academy of Creation about to sit their final exam. 

In Civolution, you play over 4 rounds or eras as ‘Gods’ to fledgling civilisations inhabiting a simulated continent. From here, players use their command console (player board) to perform actions, store resources gathered by their civilisation, score cards, etc.

Civolution Score Board

However, an era does not end after an arbitrary number of turns but the number of console reset actions taken by the players. The number of reset actions available, of which a single player can only perform up to 4 times in an era, is double the number of players plus 1.

Every action, except the reset action, requires 2 action dice to perform.  All but the reset and sleep action are upgradable and naturally get more powerful as they do.

The actions determine everything in Civolution, from drawing more cards to erecting buildings, from playing cards to your console to procreation and, yes, making more meeples.

I briefly mentioned the sleep action above. Sleep is the player’s in-game character resting. This action gives you access to the ways to mitigate the numbers on your action dice.

This is done with focus, which acts as an additional dice, and ideas, which you can spend to add or subtract 1 from a dice (6>1 and 1>6).

Even with this though, an action can only be performed once pre reset. Mitigating your dice is crucial, as it allows you to perform the action you want to take instead of being forced to take what’s available from a poor roll.

Beyond the dice-based action are the cards. Coming from 5 different open drafted decks: achievement, building, insight, invention and mutation.

Each offers different benefits for paying the resource cost to play them. Benefits include opening extra targets for certain actions, awarding success points (i.e. victory points) when performing certain actions, fully upgrading an action for free, and more.Getting the cards into your hand can be bothersome. It’s an action, the research action, to look at 2 and take 1 or to draw a card. Taking this action stops you from doing another action, which could otherwise progress your game plan and overall strategy.

Civolution is an amazing combination of classic Euro-game mechanics, where just one more turn could shift the entire end game. It is a game of long-term plans and tough choices: let a few meeples starve this era to stave off an event effect, or feed your meeples and score more points but lose a few in doing so…

There are no wrong choices and many, many different strategies, which change with each variable set-up as the modular map tiles are moved around with each game, and different cards are revealed and dealt out.

My pick of the year 2024!

Civolution

£75.99 £87.49

Description Hello, student beings! The cosmic faculty of the Technical Academy of Creation is delighted to welcome you to your Civolution, the final exam in Civilization Design! For this occasion, we prepared a humanoid scenario on an isolated continent. Here,… read more

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What Else?

That's it for this year

There we go, our favourite games released in 2024. It is fair to say we had some fantastic gaming experiences and a lot of fun playing these games, which makes me so excited for what 2025 might bring.

There were some games I wish I had got around to playing and some I already have planned for 2025: Shackleton Base and SETI. Both really appeal to me with their space theme. Slay the Spire ticks a lot of boxes for me as a fan of the game, and a deck builder. Middle Ages passed me by but the theme and artwork look lovely. Finally, Fromage gained a lot of good reviews, and who doesn't want to be a French cheese maker?

So that was it for 2024. Thank you for being part of our journey last year, for reading our blogs, and for being part of the Gathering Games community.

We have a lot of content already planned for 2025. I am excited, that's for sure! Right now, I am off as those games won't play themselves, but be sure to sign up to our newsletter for 3% your first order with us and check out our full collection of board games, including strategy games, family games, party games and children's games right here at Gathering Games.

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