Board Game Friday: My Top 50 Games of 2024 (#40 - 31)

Welcome back to Part 2 (of 5) of my Top 50 Games of 2024.  Today, I am counting down games #40 through #31.  If you missed the first part of the countdown, you can find games #50 - 41 here.

#40:  Draftosaurus

2023 ranking:  22 (down 18)

Draftsaurus is a family-weight game where you take a handful of wooden dinosaur meeples and choose one of them to add to your player board.  You then pass the remaining dinos to the next player while the player to the other side of you passes their dinosaurs to you.  Select one from that group, and repeat the process until you have no dinosaurs left to pass.  Do this for two rounds, add up everyone's score based on dinosaurs placed on your individual player boards, and then high score wins!  I reviewed this game back in March 2023 and it's still a game that remains in my play rotation, especially with groups of 3 or 4 people.

#39:  Cat in the Box: Deluxe Edition

2023 ranking:  30 (down 9)

Cat in the Box is a trick-taking game with a neat twist - the cards have no predetermined color (suit).  Instead, when you play a card you also must name what color it is.  It sounds like there wouldn't be an interesting game there, but the special sauce here is that you can't name a number/color combination that has already been played...and you can't play a color once you've declared your hand empty of that color.  Don't cause a paradox and you'll be fine!

#38:  Fleet

2023 ranking:  32 (down 6)

Fleet is a card game that I didn't enjoy much the first time I played it.  After that disappointing play, the game sat unplayed (and unloved) on my shelf for a few years.  At that point, I decided I needed to clear out some shelf space for new games and so I gathered up a bunch of games to trade/sell.  Upon seeing Fleet on my shelf, I thought I owed it to the game to give it one more shot (mostly because I had all but forgotten everything about the game other than my distaste for that initial playthrough).  Well, you can probably guess by the fact that Fleet now resides in my Top 50 games that the shelf-saving gameplay of Fleet went well and now it's one of my favorite small box card games!

#37:  Cascadia

2023 ranking:  17 (down 20)

Cascadia is a great game and don't let the 20 spot drop in my rankings fool you, it's a wonderful game.  However, for me, the game Harmonies scratches a lot of the same itches but with a slightly quicker gameplay and a bit more turn-to-turn strategy that I like.  For as much as I like Cascadia, I think I'd always prefer to play Harmonies and, as such, this Top 50 game may not be long for my list (or collection) moving forward!

#36:  Ticket to Ride:  Europe

2023 ranking:  21 (down 15)

Ticket to Ride is a modern-day classic game that has spawned tons of variations.  Ticket to Ride:  Europe is one such variation where the main new gimmick is the addition of tunnels (which I hate) and stations (which make route blocking much more difficult).  I think of Ticket to Ride:  Europe as a much more kid-friendly version of the game and while it's fine I prefer some of the other versions of Ticket to Ride quite a bit more (this won't be the last time you see a Ticket to Ride game on my list).

#35:  Dwar7es Fall

2023 ranking:  NA

A new to-the-list game, Dwar7es Fall is a worker placement, tile placement game about building castles, collecting gems, and basically outscoring your opponents as you prepare for the upcoming winter.  The game has some "take that" elements to it which I don't usually care for but in Dwar7es Fall the entire package simply worked for me.  It's a clever little game and it can get fairly mean and nasty with more players (playing with only two players makes the game a bit more strategic and when someone attacks you it's usually quite clear why they are doing so).

#34:  Cockroach Poker

2023 ranking:  NA

Cockroach Poker is a party game of sorts where everyone wins except for the one loser.  Basically, it's a game of bluffing (and double-bluffing) where you pass cards around the table declaring them to be specific creatures.  Are you lying or telling the truth - and, more importantly, does the person you are passing the card to know your tendencies?  Cockroach Poker is a game that never seems to fail once people get into it, though there is more of a learning curve here than in a lot of other party games.  Also, it's worth noting that once someone has nearly busted, the game often devolves into a case of "pile on the loser" since the goal is to simply not be the one person who loses!

#33:  Forbidden Island

2023 ranking:  40 (up 7)

I believe this is the first game that has moved up my rankings since last year.  Forbidden Island worked its way higher up my list because it is a favorite cooperative game of my son's.  He and I play this one fairly regularly and almost always at the hardest difficulty.  We usually lose but it's almost always close...there's just enough of that "would've, could've, if only" sense that makes even the losses feel like they were that close to being victories instead.  I still have Forbidden Dessert in my collection that I traded for a long time ago but we haven't yet gotten that one to the table - I'm guessing I'll only need one game from this series in my collection in the long run but until I try Forbidden Dessert, Forbidden Island is here to stay!

#32:  Ticket to Ride

2023 ranking:  16 (down 16)

The Ticket to Ride series is probably my most played series, at least with my family.  Both my son and wife will play Ticket to Ride so as long as they are into the series, various versions of the game are likely to stick around on my Top 50 list.  Unfortunately for the "OG" Ticket to Ride, I've kind of been ruined by online play of this game so much so that I have less and less desire to bring this one to the real-life table.  For those unaware, apparently the winning strategy in Ticket to Ride is to simply draw a million cards, then play everything out all at once (ideally grabbing as many of the 6-train 15 points paths as possible) and then ending the game in a matter of a few turns.  In this style of play, your individual tickets rarely come into play which kind of ruins the main conceit of the game if you ask me.  I think other Ticket to Ride boards do a better job of counteracting this particular play style because most of them have fewer 15 point tracks to claim.

#31:  Just One

2023 ranking:  26 (down 5)

Just One is my highest-rated true party game for good reason, it's always a hit no matter who I play it with!  The game works well with four players but it can be extended up to many more and still be just as fun.  In Just One, one person has to guess the magic word based on the clues that the other people at the table write down.  The trick here is that anyone who writes down a clue that matches someone else's clue has to then hide their clue from the guesser.  For example, if the word to be guessed was Disney and two players wrote "Mickey" then those two clues would be turned face down and the guesser would have two fewer words to work with in order to correctly guess Disney.  It sounds sort of lame when I type out how the game works, you'll have to trust me that it's much better in person!

That does it for this chunk of my Top 50 Games of 2024 countdown.  I hope to bring you games #30 - 21 next Friday, so stay tuned for that!  Until then, I'd love to hear what you think of my list thus far!