End of Year & Top 100 (2025)

Posted byThomasPKingPosted inArticlesTags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

10 — BattleTech TCG

2024 #24

I ended up buying some of the new fan-made stuff, which they sell just for the cost of materials, so $7 or so for each deck is very reasonable. And these are much better then the weird hodgepodge of cards I had, even though we’ve only played with starters so far. And my friend is finally starting to understand the tactics of attacking and blocking, and when to hold back some ‘Mechs. Our last game was much closer. We’ll be able to play for a while with what I bought, so I look forward to playing more.

9 — The Lord of the Rings Trading Card Game

2022 #5
2023 #61
2024 #26

We got this played a few times this year. First was just starter decks to teach my friend the game, but now we’ve been going through the sets, playing the way it’s meant to be played. My friend is still struggling with the idea that only half his deck is active at a time, but he’s slowly getting into it. And the community for this game is incredibly active. I hope to get this played lots more next year.

8 — The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth

New in 2025

Yeah, this has replaced 7 Wonders Duel for me. I love the new victory conditions and the removal of victory points. Also, the landmarks feel way more impactful than wonders have in previous 7W games (though, the ones in Duel were also better than the original ones). While I tend to favor tight economies, it doesn’t bother me that this one is looser; the decisions are still plenty tense. I love the feeling that you can lose at any point if you let your opponent get too many of the right cards.

7 — Vindication

2022 #2
2023 #2
2024 #3

I wasn’t all that surprised to see this slip a few spots, but really, it barely moved. The base game is a little vanilla, but there are so many expansions and modules to change things up. Still haven’t tried them all. We’ll see how Vestige turns out, since it has a solo mode included that seems to be better than the modes in Vindication. And I’m all for a cyberpunk setting. Aren’t enough good cyberpunk games.

6 — War of the Ring: The Card Game

2024 #5

This is one that didn’t hit the table this year, but it was very close! I need to get enough games in with the solo mode so that I get a hang of the priorities and keep the momentum going. That’s the one downside of the solo mode; it’s a little tricky, but nowhere near as bad as Undaunted. But I still think it shines in multiplayer. What a great system. Very clean and tense without losing theme.

5 — The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth

New in 2025

This was a Christmas gift last year, so just missed getting onto the list. But I’ve played a full campaign solo, and most of a 2-player campaign. This one does what I wanted Destinies and Mansions of Madness to do, where the app handles some things, but the bulk of the gameplay is on the table. Having your gear and character decks is perfect. And the decks are very customizable, where you can swap roles between scenarios and upgrade cards to create awesome combos. And there are tons of characters with the expansions. I look forward to exploring the expansion scenarios next.

4 — Star Wars: Unlimited

2024 #6

While we haven’t played through all the sets, I’ve been loving what we’ve played. Bounties and capturing was great, but I was really looking forward to pilots. Jump to Light Speed has been a lot of fun so far, and we’ve still got more to play through. I also got a great deal on a base game booster box, so we’ll have that to play. And we’re both excited for the new set, Secrets of Power, since it has a lot of cards based on Andor. The plot mechanic looks fun.

3 — Runebound: Second Edition

2022 #1
2023 #1
2024 #2

How the mighty have fallen! By 1 spot (2 total). Still a classic. And I’ve even thought about bringing it out for 3-player since my friend has been enjoying more adventure games with just bits of story, instead of ones with huge paragraphs of story. I’ll be very curious if this is one FFG brings back with their new “vault” crowdfunding. How much will they bring back? All of it? Just the base game? Hopefully they don’t try to bring back the DOA 3rd edition…

2 — The One Ring Second Edition

New in 2025

This has slowly been turning into my top 100 Lord of the Rings games. I almost tried this out last year, but held off since I’d had poor luck playing solo RPGs in ongoing campaigns. But I figured, if I’m going to stick to one, it’d probably be this one? I’ve also allowed myself to take breaks instead of pressuring myself to keep going; I don’t want that sense of “failure” if I don’t play it for a bit. So far, it’s worked. I’ve played a good handful of sessions of various lengths, slowly getting the hang of the mechanics. Journeying has been particularly fun. I look forward to getting further into the campaign. The Moria book also adds a new solo version with a focus on dungeon crawling, but it’s quite a bit crunchier, so I wanted to learn the basics before going crazy. I think this could become a new #1 in time.

1 — Middle-earth CCG

2024 #1

My holy grail game from 30 years ago. It’s been amazing diving into this game the past couple of years. There’s so much variety in the original Wizards set, but I’ve also bought some Lidless Eye cards to try out the bad guys, and I opened a box of White Hand to try out a corrupt wizard. So many ways to play. This one is the ultimate Middle-earth sandbox. Even the RPG let’s you move around freely, you can’t play whatever you want; you play a hero. Period. Which doesn’t bother me at all, but it’s fun playing with more “what if” scenarios in MECCG. But it’s also great just playing the classic heroes, going off and doing their quests.

1Middle-earth
2The One Ring Second Edition
3Runebound: Second Edition
4Star Wars: Unlimited
5The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth
6War of the Ring: The Card Game
7Vindication
8The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth
9The Lord of the Rings Trading Card Game
10BattleTech TCG
11A Feast for Odin
12Magic: The Gathering
13Obsession
14The White Castle
15Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game
16Arkham Horror: The Card Game
17Frostgrave
18Agricola
19Altered
20Earthborne Rangers
21Caverna: The Cave Farmers
22Stroganov
23Knarr
24Nusfjord
25Let’s Go! To Japan: Matsuri Edition
26Anno 1800: The Board Game
27Distilled
28Sweet Lands
29Core Worlds
30A Game of Thrones: The Card Game
31Warhammer Fantasy RPG 2nd Edition
32Hanamikoji
33Unmatched Game System
34Valheim: The Board Game
35Champions of Midgard
36Fleet
37Heat: Pedal to the Metal
38Pokémon Trading Card Game
39Blood Rage
40Fabled Lands
41Critical IF Gamebooks
42Wingspan
43The Witcher: Old World
44Brass: Lancashire/Birmingham
45Fear Itself 2nd Edition
46The Castles of Burgundy
47Rurik: Dawn of Kiev
48Speakeasy
49Chronicles of Frost
50The Vale of Eternity
51Race for the Galaxy
52DinoGenics
53Elder Sign
54Everdell
55Vikings: Scourge of the North
56Vantage
57Cartaventura: Vinland
58Finspan
59Pax Viking
60Lost Ruins of Arnak
61Trickerion: Collector’s Edition
62Scythe
63Golden Dragon Gamebooks
64Viticulture Essential Edition
65Age of Steam
66Tokaido
67스플렌더: Pokémon (Splendor: Pokémon)
68IKI
69Raiders of the North Sea
70Yedo: Deluxe Master Set
71Nippon
72Undaunted 2200: Callisto
73Glen More II: Chronicles
74Dorfromantik: Sakura
75Fire & Axe: A Viking Saga
76Vinhos Deluxe Edition
77Near and Far
78Great Western Trail: Argentina
79Star Wars: Outer Rim
80D&D 5th Edition
817 Wonders
82Village Rails
83Civilization: A New Dawn
84Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island
85Cascadia
86Imperial Settlers: Empires of the North
87Dune: Imperium
88Descent: Journeys in the Dark (Second Edition)
89Destinies
90Yokohama
91Mansions of Madness: Second Edition
92Space Hulk: Death Angel – The Card Game
93Bitoku
94Mythos
957 Wonders Duel
96Ra
97Pandemic: Fall of Rome
98London (Second Edition)
99Concordia
100Scarlet Heroes
Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Leave a comment