For the last twelve years, I’ve intermittently published my Best New (to me!) Games list… and, when I missed a year or two, I added the missing lists to the most recent post.

• Best New (to me!) Games of 2011
• Best New (to me!) Games of 2013
• Best New (to me!) Games of 2016
  • Includes lists from 2014 and 2015
• Best New (to me!) Games of 2019
  • Includes lists from 2017 and 2018
• Best New (to me!) Games of 2020
• Best New (to me!) Games of 2021
• Best New (to me!) Games of 2022

However, before we get properly started with my list for 2023, we need to cover a few games that were excluded from the top ten list for various reasons but still warrant attention being paid to them.

Where appropriate, I’ve linked to OG reviews of the games I mention… please, take the opportunity to enjoy more of this wonderful site we call home.

Expansions of Note

Sometimes, I’ve put expansions under #10 on the list as a group… but this year it makes more sense to break them out into their own category. Expansions specific to a game that appears later in the post (see: Catan Starfarers or Thunder Road: Vendetta, for example) will be dealt with under their entry.

Ark Nova: Marine Worlds

With the plethora of cards in the base game, it’s always a question if “more stuff” will actually be better for the game… and, to their credit, the Marine Worlds expansion adds interesting decisions without gumming up the works of the original game. I particularly like the improved action card draft, which nudges players in new (and often different) directions.

Dead Reckoning: Deep Waters (Saga Expansion #1)

Dead Reckoning has really grown on me… and then, just a couple of months ago, the KS with the saga expansions arrived. I’ve only managed to play through the first Saga so far (solo) – but it’s been really enjoyable to be pursuing your normal goals while exploring all new storylines and adventures. 

Dune Imperium: Immortality

Dire Wolf managed to make ANOTHER expansion for the highly touted Dune: Imperium that both deepened game play (offering new options for resource usage and tactical play) and continued to bring the mythology of the Dune universe into the game. (And I haven’t even got to play Dune Imperium: Uprising yet!)

Mosaic: Wars & Disasters

Mosaic is an excellent civ-building game… and the expansion adds some great new elements (many of which can be used as modules). Multi-player games with it have been a lot of fun – but I’m still unhappy with Forbidden Games for numerous mistakes they’ve made with the excellent David Turczi solo “bot”: only putting Herobotus in the Colossal edition of the base game, then not updating it with the Wars & Disasters expansion (even after printing “1-5 players” on the expansion box).

Return to Dark Tower: Covenant

Honestly, this is even better than the first expansion (Alliances) – more new heroes, the very cool monuments, lots of new quests in the app that don’t all work just like the previous game quests, and the addition of doom skulls and wasteland territories. Don’t think I’ll play Return to Dark Tower without it from now on.

New Editions

A trio of games had new revised editions in 2023 that aren’t really “new to me” – but I’d feel bad if I didn’t give a shout out to them

Catan: Starfarers

Thank you once again to my BGG Secret Santa – our three games of Catan: Starfarers (so far!) have been faster-paced than with the original… coming in at 75 minutes or so with three players (and using the New Encounters Space Amoeba expansion only added about 10 minutes of game time). This definitely knocked some rough edges off the original design while maintaining much of the charm… and the design of the spaceship shakers is much less fragile. (I’ll save my further observations for an upcoming review.)

Clank! Catacombs

My sons like to call Clank! Catacombs “procedurally generated Clank!” – and they’re not wrong – but it’s more than that. It’s possibly the best single set of cards in a Clank! Game… and there are numerous twists (prisoners! wayshrines! ghosts!) in addition to the board being semi-randomly created each game.

Challengers: Beach Cup

This stand-alone expansion has all the goodness of the original Challengers, plus slightly more interesting card designs and the trainer system. And, as an added bonus, you can use both boxes to play a mega-game with 16 people.

Honorable Mentions

A few games that deserve a mention – but that didn’t quite make the top ten cut. They are in alphabetical order.

• Ancient Knowledge – I’m absolutely knocked out by the puzzle of building a tableau that ages into decline… but I think it’s probably best with 2 players or with 3 players without AP. (Also looking forward to the solo mode in the upcoming expansion.)
• Cape May – the lovely bits are matched by a well-thought-out city-building game that doesn’t overstay its welcome.
• Foundations of Rome – my one play was on a blinged out copy of this medium-weight city-builder… but it’s stunning on the table and I kinda wish I’d backed a copy of it though it would likely never get played.
• Legacy of Yu – this solo campaign game manages to feel thematic and Euro-y at the same time. (I reviewed it for the Opinionated Gamers earlier this year.)
• Path of Civilization – my two plays (one multi-player, one solo) were both very good… an abstracted civ game with mostly simultaneous play (with a few more twists than 7 Wonders).
• Pioneer Rails – a flip’n’write from OG writer Jeff Allers (and Matthew Dunstan) that actually does some nice things both with rail-building and with poker. 
• Scram! – the one version of Cabo/Silver that doesn’t make me want to run from the table… instead, I think the partnership element is terrific.
• SolForge Fusion – a two-player lane battler with a really intriguing card promotion design. The only problem with it is the constant need to use dice to update multiple values on some cards – too fiddly.
• Surfosaurus MAX – another game with Poker-ish elements combined with bits from the Knizia classic Trendy and day-glo dinosaur art. Wish I could find myself a copy here in the States.
• The Red Dragon Inn – I have worked very hard over the years to avoid Red Dragon Inn – a game about fighting & drinking in a variety of fantasy bars/pubs… but my son got a copy and – surprise! – it’s actually a lot of fun in a Family Business/The Dragon & Flagon/etc. kind of way.
• Waypoints – the latest print’n’play roll’n’write from Postmark Games uses a topographic map as each player’s game board.
• Zombicide 2nd Edition – another game I dodged for many years… and was pleasantly surprised to find I actually enjoyed it when playing with my two sons. I think some of that has to do with development/design work that was done on the new edition to make it cleaner and easier to teach/play.

Best New (to me!) Games of 2023:

While I’ve put the following games in a countdown order, there’s a lot of flexibility in the ratings… with the right crew of people, I’d be happy to play any of them.

#10: Empyreal: Spells & Steam

I found a barely-used used copy of Empyreal: Spells & Steam for half price. So, based on some immutable law of game collecting, that should mean I like it twice as much, right?

Well, it’s actually a pretty brilliant design – my younger son & I have enjoyed a number of two player games of it. The blend of pick up & deliver and network building combined with some really wacky special powers works very well – and the very nice production makes it even more playable. We even invested in the expansion content.

I think it slows down with 4+ players in ways that make it slightly less fun… but 2-3 players is just about perfect. The solo mode – which I’ve only played once – works as well, but I’m more likely to use the solo bot to add an extra player to our 2 player games.

#9: Unmatched Adventures: Tales to Amaze!

One of the curses of doing a good bit of playtesting is that sometimes you end up with the earliest versions of a game – and that’s what happened to us with Tales to Amaze. We were frustrated by a number of things in the original prototype.

However, I trusted Restoration Games to do proper development work – and my trust was not disappointed. Tales to Amaze actually takes one of the best skirmish games out there (Unmatched: Battle of Legends) and creates a highly functional and enjoyable cooperative game as players take on Mothman or the Alien Invader along with their cryptid minions. (Do not play Ant Queen as a minion in your first game – trust me on this one.)

And if the gorgeous production & great cooperative game weren’t enough, all four of the player heroes work as competitive heroes against any of the other Unmatched characters. 

Yes, I am working on a full review – it should land in the next week or so.

#8: Cabanga!

Two of the games on this list I’ve only played a single time – and Cabanaga! is the shorter of the two… by a long shot. But it only took one play for me to fall head over heels for this silly but highly enjoyable card-shedding game that keeps everyone involved in addition to getting to yell “Cabanga!” a lot. 

Now, if they’ll make it easier to get here in the States…

#7: Voidfall

I’m currently trying to work on a review for this intricate and amazing game of interstellar conflict & cultural survival… that is shorter than the three rulebooks (yes, three – I kid you not) that come with the game. Normally, I’d balk at a game with a non-random combat system and intertwined mechanisms – but the theme of defeating the Voidborn is so tightly woven into the design & flow of the game that I find myself lost in the world and the puzzle of trying to expand my civilization’s capabilities whilst fending off the encroachment of mind-altering evil. 

The game comes with a myriad of player factions and stunning gorgeous production – as well being fully playable as a solo (the way I have been playing), cooperative, and competitive game. 

#6: Great Western Trail: New Zealand

In what is becoming a common theme this year (see Red Dragon Inn & Zombicide 2nd Edition in the Honorable Mentions), I avoided playing the original Great Western Trail for a long time – even though I really enjoyed some of Pfister’s designs. My first play was very good – but I just didn’t see who I could get to play it with me.

The new versions being released piqued my interest – but not enough to pull the trigger until GWT: New Zealand… and boy howdy, I’m glad it did. There are a number of changes to the base game – though the basics are still the same. It’s as if they took GWT and the Rails to the North expansion, smushed them together, added some clever twists to “loosen” the game up a bit, and then did a better job with the graphics than the previous versions.

The solo AI is very solid and incredibly easy to administer – though not always easy to beat. I’m looking forward to more games of GWT:NZ this year… both solo and against other players!

#5: Daybreak

Matt Leacock and the rest of the Daybreak team have created one of the most gamer-friendly cooperative games out there… and, due to the individual country project tableaus, really subverted “alpha” players from taking over the game. There are plenty of opportunities for cooperation and coordination – but each country is “on its own” in dealing with climate change and that affects the flavor of the game.

#4: Mr. President: The American Presidency 2001-2020

I wrote an extensive review/preview for this massive solo “role-playing” board game earlier this year… you should read that for more details. At its heart, Mr. President is a brilliant tactical choose-your-own-adventure game of domestic and international politics and policy – and it’s not for everyone.

But I love it.

#3: Ready Set Bet

Last year, I included John D. Clair’s Dead Reckoning on this list… yet his Ready Set Bet is a COMPLETELY different kind of game that I still love. Using the app beats out the provided dice/board system for resolving the race… and the real-time betting has been wildly enjoyable with diverse groups of gamers and non-gamers. (Weirdly enough, my real-time-game-hating non-gamer wife even asked to play it again.)

#2: Faraway

So, I was doing my devotional reading the other morning and I came across this quote from Soren Kierkegaard:

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”

And I immediately wanted to play Faraway again. 

This simple 8 round card game is clever, easy-to-teach, fast-playing, a heckuva lot of fun, and the BGA implementation is great as well. (Thankfully, it’s coming to the States in physical form sometime this spring!)

#1: Thunder Road: Vendetta

Last year, Restoration Games’ Return to Dark Tower occupied this spot… this year, they take it again with the amazing re-imagining of the Milton Bradley classic Thunder Road. Thunder Road: Vendetta has all the bells & whistles that you want – great art design, cool minis, loads of vehicular mayhem, the ability to season the game to taste with modules of drivers, mods, and hazards – and still keeps the game from bogging down or slowing to a crawl.

While we haven’t seen the Big Rig (an expansion vehicle that is a semi-truck with two trailers) win a game, every person who has played it has walked away from the table smiling. We’ve had races end in pileups on the first board that rival the police cruiser crash scene in The Blues Brothers… and we’ve had desperate races with a single small vehicle being chased by three choppers to the finish line. 

For me, this was the best game of 2023… we played it 20 times this year and I fully expect to get 10-20 plays next year. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Five & Dime

I got curious – how many of my top new-to-me games were in my Five & Dime lists for 2023?

Dimes

• Thunder Road: Vendetta 20

Nickels

• Unmatched: Tales to Amaze! 9
• Empyreal: Spells & Steam 8
• Daybreak 7
• Great Western Trail: New Zealand 5

So… five out of ten. That’s a decent batting average.

Looking Ahead

There are a number of games on my radar for this list in 2023… including Arydia: The Paths We Dare Tread, Roll Player Adventures,  Forsaken, Imperium Horizons, and a protoype I’m not allowed to talk about… yet.

Games pictured above:

• Top Row: Daybreak; Unmatched: Tales to Amaze!; Voidfall
• Bottom Row: Mr. President: The American Presidency, 2001-2020; Thunder Road: Vendetta; Empyreal: Spells & Steam

I received review copies of the Dead Reckoning base game and the app version of Scram!. The rest of the games & expansions on the list were purchased by me, belong to one of my two sons, or were played with copies owned by other OG writers.