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Wingspan
A calm little game about birds that tables get weirdly competitive over.
The games I've written up in full so far, sorted by my score. Read the verdict before you trust the number, because the right game for your table isn't always the highest-rated one.
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A calm little game about birds that tables get weirdly competitive over.
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Lovely tiles, simple rules, and a surprising amount of quiet cruelty.
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The economic game that sits at number one, and earns it the hard way.
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One-word clues, two teams, and a lot of yelling across the coffee table.
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A co-op where you are the island fighting back, and it does not go easy on you.
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Claim train routes, hoard cards, and quietly ruin someone else's plans.
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Draft cards, build a civilization, and somehow seat seven people without anyone waiting.
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Build a modern zoo, and plan to teach the rules for a good while.
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Deck-building meets worker placement in the desert, louder and meaner than before.
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Save the world together, or spend an hour arguing about how you're going to lose.
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Build a little medieval countryside one tile at a time, then fight over the good fields.
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Cooperative Pandemic that scars itself a little more every time you play it.
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The one that started a thousand game nights, and one or two genuine arguments.
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A hundred hours of tactical dungeon-crawling that lives on your table for a year.
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Build a beautiful machine, then watch it turn a red rock blue.
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The spice must flow, and so must your agents, into exactly the right spots.
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The all-day galactic epic that people remember for years.
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The whole War of the Ring on your table, dice, doom, and all.
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The whole galactic civil war on your table, and it's really a duel for two.
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All the Gloomhaven you wanted, none of the table-eating sprawl.
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A space-terraforming engine builder that rewards planning and punishes hesitation.
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The Cold War on a tabletop, and you're holding cards that betray you.
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A space-race engine builder where you actually feel like you're hunting for aliens.
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The roguelike deck-builder that somehow survived the trip to your tabletop.
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Roll two dice, build the prettiest little kingdom of efficiency you've ever obsessed over.
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You run a civilization on a budget of four actions, and every one of them hurts to spend.
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7 Wonders Duel goes to Mordor, and somehow comes back better.
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A giant frozen campaign that asks for a year of your life and mostly earns it.
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A cattle drive that's secretly one of the smartest engines you'll ever build.
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Two hours of cotton, coal, and quietly ruining each other's plans.
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A whole galactic empire built and burned in one evening, not one weekend.
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The best two-player game most couples and roommates end up keeping.
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It's the Alien movie you get to play, betrayal and all.
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Gorgeous mechs, a brewing cold war, and almost nobody throws a punch.
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A giant Viking optimization puzzle that hands you too many good options on purpose.
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A goofy office-fantasy campaign that turns deck-building into a story you can't stop telling.
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A Roman trade game where your hand of cards is the whole engine and the whole scoreboard.
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Indiana Jones meets a clean engine builder, and somehow it works.
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You herd cows to Kansas City, and somehow it's the best puzzle on your shelf.
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A Lovecraftian campaign in a card box, where your investigator scars over time.
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Cute woodland critters wage a brutal, lopsided war for the forest.
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A bag of little wooden people that slowly becomes the engine you've been dreaming about.
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Terraform the land, build your engine, and win without ever rolling a die.
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A video-game power fantasy crammed into a box of poker chips and custom dice.
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A brutal, beautiful fight over water that punishes sloppy planning.
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A brain-melting solo puzzle disguised as a fantasy adventure.
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Four classes fight over one economy, and nobody gets to play it safe.
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A brutal electric car factory where the boss is out to get you.
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Adorable woodland critters, a giant cardboard tree, and a surprisingly sharp little engine inside.
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A trick-taking puzzle where talking is basically against the rules.
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Build a Tuscan vineyard, and somehow worker placement has never gone down this smooth.
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Flick a wooden disc, chase the 20, fall in love by the third round.
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A racing game that finally makes the dumb part of your brain happy and the smart part too.
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You build a hero, you punch a villain, and you'll want to do it again immediately.
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Build a deck, rob a dungeon, and run for the exit before the dragon eats you.
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The friendliest train game grows up over twelve nights and never gets scary.
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Build a fast-food empire with zero luck and zero mercy.
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A tight little card puzzle wearing a city-builder's costume.
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A gorgeous, brutal game of switching sides in 19th-century Afghanistan.
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Lose your mind on purpose, then go punch a god in the face.
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A gorgeous little nature puzzle you'll finish smiling, even when you lose.
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Terra Mystica grows up, adds homework, and somehow gets even better.
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The role-selection classic that taught a generation of Euro fans how to think.
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A gorgeous, brain-melting puzzle about building a Mars colony one interlocking system at a time.
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A Cold War spy campaign hiding inside the Pandemic engine you already know.
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A calm little puzzle of hexes and critters that's smarter than it looks.
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Worker placement where you borrow from your own future and pay for it later.
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A dwarf farming sandbox that lets you build almost anything you want.
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A grimdark campaign where the boss fights are the whole reason you showed up.
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The farming game where your family is always one harvest from going hungry.
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A Viking brawl where dying gloriously can win you the game.
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A Downton Abbey fantasy with a sharp Euro engine humming underneath.
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Werewolf grew up, got clever, and stopped making dead people leave the room.
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Roll the dice, serve the strudel, charm the emperor, sweat every turn.
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Rebuild a ruined city while every single action quietly feeds three others.
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A whole meaty Euro squeezed into nine turns and a tiny box.
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A post-apocalyptic Pandemic that flips the whole formula and makes you build the map as you go.
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A hand-painted open world you sail through one session at a time, and it can absolutely wreck you.
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A worker placement game built on giant turning gears, where patience is the whole strategy.
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An auction-and-economics brain-burner where winning means staying second as long as you can.
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It's the cowboy classic with the cattle swapped for sheep, and that's the smart move.
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A whisky-soaked economic engine where the market is the real opponent.
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An app plays the haunted house so you can just be scared of it.
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A gorgeous, brain-friendly Euro that teaches in ten minutes and rewards you for going deeper.
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Pull one chip too many and your potion blows up in your face.
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Pandemic grows up, moves to Middle-earth, and starts telling stories.
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A medieval engine-builder where every track you climb needs the other tracks to climb it.
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A cruel, lovely little economic engine where every turn you wish you had two more workers.
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A space 4X with the dice ripped out and a math puzzle bolted in.
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You run an art gallery, and every move you make pushes three other dominoes.
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A cyberpunk hacking duel where the two sides don't even play the same game.
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A brutal little farm where forgetting to feed your family costs you the game.
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A stormtrooper-blasting campaign that nails the movies and tests your patience for expansions.
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The cozy bird game, rebuilt so two people actually fight over a board.
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A sprawling Caribbean engine-builder where moving slower usually wins you the game.
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A brainy Galapagos voyage where your workers go to school before they go to work.
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Program your mech, watch the plan go sideways, laugh anyway.
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A cute little bomb squad puzzle that makes your whole table hold its breath.
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A frozen-earth Euro where chaining four little actions into one big turn is the whole drug.
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A galactic engine in your hands that plays fast and reads minds.
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A trick-taking game where you all win or lose together, and you can barely talk about it.
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A brutal, gorgeous survival campaign where your people die and the story keeps going.
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Mancala grew up, learned to count points, and got a little obsessive about it.
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A whole slasher movie crammed into one sweaty, dice-chucking solo hour.
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A space opera where the cards in your hand boss you around, and that's the whole point.
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A deck-builder that makes you race a dragon and pray it doesn't notice you.
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The granddaddy of area control, and it still picks fights.
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A quiet, generous farming sandbox built for exactly two people and a big table.
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All the brains of Concordia, plus a way to play it with a teammate.
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A whole galactic empire in one evening, dice and heartbreak included.
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A tiny ladder-climber with one rule so mean it's brilliant.
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The worker placement game everyone hands a beginner, and most of them stay.
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The deck-builder that finally lets you stop shuffling and start scheming.
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A Lovecraftian campaign where your detective levels up and the world keeps trying to break you.
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Your workers are dice that get smarter, then die, and it's strangely beautiful.
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The gem-grabbing classic, sharpened into a tight little knife fight for two.
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A shared sci-fi tech tree where every short turn forces a sharp little choice.
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A pocketful of suns, three rounds of nerve, and you against everyone's patience.
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You run a luxury space cruise line, and the worker placement never locks you out.
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A coldly brilliant survival brawl where the Ice Age is coming and your friends are worse.
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A logic puzzle that makes you feel like a real astronomer, app and all.
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A word game that makes you feel clever and stupid in the same sentence.
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A whole empire's rise and fall, run on cardboard and hard choices.
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A brutal little survival story that punishes you for being optimistic.
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You roll the dice, then you spend the whole game outsmarting them.
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A Victorian magic show where the real trick is planning three turns ahead.
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A deck-builder that actually goes somewhere, fast.
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It's Wingspan that hit the gym, grew a tail, and started breathing fire.
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A gorgeous Celtic knife fight where the crown is always slipping out of someone's hands.
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A fleet on the run, a traitor at the table, and trust that quietly falls apart.
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A gorgeous fantasy kitchen sink that somehow holds together.
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A gorgeous industrial-era puzzle where one clever action ripples across the whole table.
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It's Alien on a board, and yes, your friends might leave you to die.
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Worker placement where nobody blocks your spot, but they can absolutely arrest your workers.
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Build a civilization, then watch your weakest corner decide everything.
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Alice in Wonderland gone to war, decided by a fistful of chips and your nerve.
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Dominion with teeth, where your choices get sharper and your neighbors get meaner.
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Viking worker placement where every move you make leaves a gift for the player next to you.
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The game where one little meeple is both your money and your muscle.
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A dying Arthurian world, hundreds of pages of story, and one ticking clock that won't let you rest.
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A brain-melting network engine set in 19th-century Saxony, and worth every wrinkle.
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A globe-trotting pulp horror co-op where the dice write the story, for better and worse.
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A money knife-fight on rails where one bad loan can end you.
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The worker placement granddaddy that still bites if you let it.
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A medieval brain-burner where you can literally buy the dice off your opponents.
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Renaissance worker placement where shared dice decide how much muscle everyone gets.
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A choose-your-own Middle-earth campaign run by an app that hides the next page until you turn it.
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A brilliant card-timing puzzle wearing a spreadsheet for a costume.
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A gorgeous co-op trick-taker that retells Fellowship one hand at a time.
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The game that invented deck-building, and it still pulls its weight.
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The ugliest box on your shelf hides one of the meanest, friendliest fights in gaming.
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A quiet quilting duel that turns out to be quietly vicious.
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A mancala puzzle bolted to six little Roman scoring games, and it works.
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A co-op deck-builder where you never shuffle and never quite feel safe.
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A whole galaxy at war, and you'll need most of a day to settle it.
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A worker-placement points engine that runs on math, not trains.
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A whole woodland grows from one shared deck, and every card makes you choose.
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A gorgeous war game where the real fight happens behind a coin screen.
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A Portuguese wine empire crammed into twelve agonizing actions.
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A trade-route puzzle where your little assistants are both your engine and your weapon.
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Everyone writes one clue, the clever ones cancel out, and the magic is in what's left.
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A grimdark space brawl that forces you to fight, not turtle.
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A 60-hour Star Trek campaign in a box, gorgeous and messy in equal measure.
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It's Pandemic with the planes ripped out and a train set bolted on.
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Build a deck, rob a tyrant's ship, and try not to die in the hallway.
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Two great games glued together, and the glue actually holds.
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A choose-your-own-adventure survival epic where one deck of cards is both your map and your heartbeat.
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Worker placement that hands you a fistful of warrior dice and dares you to sail.
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A spinning Lazy Susan of space tiles that keeps all six of you busy at once.
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A gorgeous dice-and-worker race where your two markers sprint to meet in the middle.
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The granddaddy of card games, and still one of the smartest you can put on a table.
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A dice-building RPG that turns missed rolls into a backup plan.
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A flip-and-write that secretly thinks it's a heavy Euro, and pulls it off.
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A galaxy-sized engine builder that fights back, if you've got the table and the evening for it.
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Build a space empire by gambling with dice you point, not push.
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A giant dice-driven Feld sandbox where you grow a civilization your own way.
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A small box that plays like a heavyweight, built for exactly two brains.
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A tiny box of spaceships that turns deck-building into a knife fight.
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The game that invented deck-building, cleaned up and still hard to put down.
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A logic puzzle wearing a worker placement coat, refereed by your phone.
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A gorgeous hike where the trail gets shorter and the good spots get taken.
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The gateway game that quietly grew teeth.
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Chess with a coin bag, and a satisfying click on every move.
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A WWII skirmish where your deck is your platoon and every casualty thins it out.
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You draw a kingdom one weird Tetris shape at a time, and it's quietly cutthroat.
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A tiny box of magic that builds into a roaring combo engine in under an hour.
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Draft cards, build an engine, and watch your little cube factory snowball.
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A cooperative card game that hands you Middle-earth and a whole lot of bad news.
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A tense two-player tug of war where every card is a tiny political gut punch.
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The friendly front door to worker placement, dice cup included.
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Skyrim on the table, built from neoprene mats and a 95-page rulebook.
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Sherlock, Dracula, and the Invisible Man walk into a foggy alley and start swinging.
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Build medieval Prague off a spinning crane that hands you choices instead of dice.
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A Star Wars sandbox where you build a scoundrel and chase fame across the galaxy.
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A bazaar logistics puzzle where your own assistants are the leash.
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All the card-combo joy of Terraforming Mars, with the two-hour slog sanded off.
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A leaner, meaner cattle drive that quietly outgrew the game it came from.
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A clever rondel-and-deck-builder where going slow is a real strategy.
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You draft cards, then jam cats into a boat like furry Tetris.
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A pick-up-and-deliver space sandbox where you write your own story and the dice ruin it.
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A deck-builder that actually feels like the xenomorph is in the vents.
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A whole civilization built in half an hour, and nobody sits around waiting.
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The rules fit on a napkin. The game outlives everyone who plays it.