BGG Top 10 Games of 2018

With the year winding down, it’s time to look back at some of the awesome board games released in 2018. Unsurprisingly, most of these aren’t available in Australia yet (Update: It’s been a couple years since this post and you’ll see that I got a chance to review a lot of them!). So instead of my expert opinion, you’re just going to have to rely on the 10 best board games of 2018 from Board Game Geek.

10. Decrypto

Decrypto is the code-cracking party game. Although calling it a party game might be a bit of a stretch. As it’s less ‘let’s get drunk and play’, and more ‘let’s sit down and think’. However with the right people, and soundtrack that can be just as good.

It’s a team game where each team is given four words matching four numbers. So your words might be something like Toast, Bridge, Cheese and Goat. Then as a clue giver, you’re provided with a three-digit code that you must relay using only these words. Where Toast represents 1, Bridge represents 2, and so on.

Before your team gets a guess, the opposing team gets a chance to crack your code. Nearly impossible to do on the first turn. But as the game goes on, they get more hints about what your words are, making the codes easier to crack. It’s a lot of fun, if not a little cerebral, for a party game.

9. Architects of the West Kingdom

Like its predecessor, Raiders of the North Sea, Architects of the West Kingdom is another innovative take on worker placement. While most games in this genre have you place out workers, and then retrieve them once you run. Not so in Architects of the West Kingdom.

Your workers only return after someone bribes the local law enforcement to put your workers in the guardhouse. Now, why would they do that? Well, some spaces increase in power the more workers of yours you have there. So for them to stop you from monopolising the space, they need to take away your workers.

However, it’s going to take more than that to stop you from building the cathedral, or other buildings around town. And they’ll get more with a visit to the black market. Thankfully, the virtue track rewards you for taking the high road but also shows just how low players will go to achieve victory.

8. Obsession

Obsession brings euro gaming to Pride and Prejudice! After a couple of lean decades, your household is now on the brink of irrelevancy. It’s up to you to turn around your fortune and gain standing with your fellow affluents once again.

What’s more, is that it’s in the middle of the season and the most impressive bachelor and bachelorette are looking for love. To win their affection, you’re going to have to do some serious strategic thinking. As you’ll be running your house on a limited budget. Figuring out how to spread your finances across renovations, parties, and house servants, is going to be a significant challenge.

Out of all the games on this list, Obsession is the biggest surprise. Because it felt like every other game is either well known or got its time in the spotlight. Yet Obsession powered its way onto this list through its great reviews and greater support from its creator.

7. Teotihuacan: City of Gods

Teotihuacan: City of Gods is not only a fun tongue twister but also the next game in the T-Series alongside T’Zolkin, and the soon-to-be-released Trismegistus: The Ultimate Formula. If your eyes aren’t drawn to this game for its cultural relevance, they’ll be drawn in by the large pyramid in the centre of the board.

During the game, you can spend turns adding new blocks to this structure, gaining points and resources as you do so. But that’s not the only way to score points, far from it. Strewn across the board are several different tracks that increase as you perform different feats and actions.

In Teotihuacan, you’re controlling three dice roaming from worker placement spot to worker placement spot around the outside of the board. These dice can be powered up throughout the game, providing yet another opportunity for strategic decision-making. Honestly, this game sounds like a whole lot of fun. So hopefully, I’ll get around to playing it in the coming year.

6. The Quacks of Quedlinburg

Under the definition of controlled chaos in the dictionary, you’ll see a picture of The Quacks of Quedlinburg. Based in ye olden times, before medicinal recipes were known, you’re throwing together all sorts of ingredients in the hopes of a remedy for your affliction: no-points-itus.

During each round, you’ll be pulling tokens out of your bag, and if it’s not an explosion, you’ll gain points and activate different special abilities. However, if you draw three explosions, then you lose everything and the round is a bust.

Knowing when to stop is the key to success as a medieval doctor. Which is easier said than done when the rewards for risks far outweigh playing it safe.

5. Underwater Cities

In the same vein as Terraforming Mars, and Ark Nova, Underwater Cities is a long-form engine-building marvel. It uses a clever worker placement mechanism, where during each turn, you play a card to an action space around the board. If your card matches the same colour as the spot, you can use both the card and the action spot. Otherwise, you just use the action spot.

It’s the age-old dilemma of wanting to do both, but realistically only getting to do one. But which one, and whether or not there are better options will leave you scratching your head.

Moving away from the main board, everyone is building their underwater biomes on their player boards. Adding upgrades to these underwater cities, and joining them to other cities via tunnels will lead you to victory. But only if you can manage your limited resources correctly.

4. Everdell

Wind in the Willows meets tableau-building in Everdell. A board game where you must prepare your town for the coming winter. You’ll send workers into the forest to find resources, which can then be used to build buildings or entice visitors to your town.

These creatures and buildings, provide you with actions or generate resources when the seasons change. It’s all par for the course as a resource management game, elevated by a wonderful theme and beautifully drawn.

Where the mechanics of Everdell go above and beyond, is that it borrows the free building mechanic from 7 Wonders. For example, if you build a farm, you can then attract a farmer to your village for free.

So there comes this temptation to only build buildings, except getting the perfect combination of building and occupant may never happen. Therefore, you need to constantly weigh up the option of playing a card vs. waiting. Meanwhile, every other player’s village gets stronger and stronger as winter approaches.

3. Root

At face value, Root is a war game about cute critters fighting over control of a forest. However, the game is much more than that. For starters, all of the factions are asymmetrical in mechanics.

So while one player focuses on building up infrastructure and defences, another might be slinking behind enemy lines and rallying the townsfolk to rebel. There are four unique factions (more with expansions) that all provide an interesting spin on how they control the forest.

While it’s an absolute joy to play around with these different factions and see how they interact with the rest of the game. The more interesting part of Root is the story it tells. Each game creates an emergent narrative about this war in the forest. Where players are at odds one second, but next they’re banded together to take down a larger foe.

Although other games also have these narratives, it’s never been as evocative as it is in Root.

2. Nemesis

Nemesis sticks out like a sore thumb. The rest of the games on this list are fairly typical, both in cost and complexity. Nemesis is anything but. It’s a large miniature-filled Kickstarter affair, overflowing with rules and complexity.

Yet, none of that stopped Nemesis from reaching the number 2 spot. That’s because Nemesis drips theme like acidic saliva from the mouth of an alien. This is fitting because it’s the closest board gaming has come to capturing the feel of the Alien movie franchise.

Players are being hunted aboard an abandoned spaceship, and forced to complete two mission objectives before they escape. All the while, an alien organism grows, becoming more malevolent as the game progresses.

Nemesis lives and dies on the cinematic moments it creates, running from a vicious alien, helping players in strife, or hindering them if it’s going to help you. Given players act as individuals, there will be moments where you’ll pull together as a team, and others when you’ll be Scar, letting Mufasa drop into a frenzy of wildebeest.

1. Brass: Birmingham

A surprising and unsurprising pick for the number one game of 2018. Surprising because Brass: Birmingham is a serious and dry game thematically. Based on the Industrial Revolution, and Birmingham England’s change from using canals as transportation to creating and using a railway.

As such, it’s very economical as you’re constantly calculating and recalculating how much money you can spend. This makes it a hard sell to get the game, and a harder sell to get newer board gamers to try it.

However, once they have a go, they’re usually begging for another game. That’s how incredible Brass Birmingham is. Every move you make has rippling ramifications throughout the rest of the game. From deciding what you’re going to build, to where, and how you’re going to connect it to your growing network.

Then just when you’re getting your feet under the game, the industrial revolution occurs. Removing almost everything you’ve built, so you need to start again. Only this time, you’re more powerful and are quicker to get up to speed.

It’s a fantastic game, and the first time I played it I couldn’t stop thinking about it for days. That’s why it’s unsurprising that this amazing game is the best of 2018.

Want to see how the rankings evolved?

If you’re tracking how the top tier has shifted over time, explore our full BGG Top 10 Archive. We break down the highest-rated releases, standouts, and heavy hitters year by year.

Explore the BGG Archive →

The amount of absolute crackers on this list proves that 2018 was a fantastic year for board games. From hiding in abandoned alien spaceships to concocting weird and wonderful potions, there’s something from the best of 2018. Which one is for you?