Surprise Hits of 2024! How great a year for games? - Your Board Game Questions, Answered!

[@TheDavidPhillips]

Faraway was my pleasant surprise of the year.

[@glayher]

There were a few but I have to say Flip 7 has been a family favorite for a family who doesn’t really like gaming. I am hoping to get them to game more and Flip 7 has helped

[@the_nerdy_sole]

The realest video out there right now haha such a vibe. Enjoyed this start to finish 😂

[@BryanSpellman]

I absolutely LOVE River of Gold. It was my game of GEN CON!!!! Great 'list'

[@jimicapone]

Courtisans was a huge hit for my groups.

[@kenkosten2257]

Rise and Fall was my biggest surprise of 2024. I hear almost no one talk about it, but I love that part of the game is creating the world map. Everyone in my family has immediately wanted to play the game again after the first play.

[@AndrewRStiles]

A couple of small box games: Flip 7, Castle Combo, Faraway, all shocked me with how good they are. Also Windmill Valley shocked me and is amazing and now I'm a fan of Dani Garcia.

[@SamiPaju]

River of Gold was the same for me. I was not expecting much and it’s just so breezy and great to play. Lots of interaction too. However, I find it actually a bit too short, so I’ve now started adding two more building tiles to both stacks in a 3p game, and 3 more in a 4p game.

[@ABTOCMEPTb]

For me Starship Interstellar was a huge 2024 surprise. Never heard of the game. Got it on sale for under $40. Ended up being as excited as On Mars while being less complicated and on a larger scale than just a single planet

[@boazdror]

Castle Combo was my biggest surprise!

[@ezraclark7904]

It came out last year but I was surprised by Deliverance, we didn't back it, we just picked it off the shelf at FLGS. My husband doesn't usually like co-op anything but he picked it out for the minis and we blazed through the campaign. Now he's totally in for dungeon crawlers, we just picked up Deeprock Galactic 2nd edition and it's also great but that was less of a surprise.

[@Lowzone16]

Personally, I watch the top 10 videos because I can identify the next I'll buy based on the taste of content creator I relate to in terms of taste and disdain.

[@Greybeagle098]

Castle Combo & Tower Up were my surprise hits of the year

[@MetalChillSpine]

I've played so much Vale of Eternity.

[@henriwhitehead]

Great video! My game of the year was a 1 am game of Match of the Century against Rodney.

[@WatchItPlayed]

That session was incredible and the timing perfect. Loved hanging out and learning that game together!

[@scyldscefing3913]

Unfortunately, because I watch, "Watch it Played," I'm never surprised when I like a game.

[@JeffGoris]

I will buy War Story: Occupied France based on Matthew's praise. Don't let me down. Loved Middle-Earth Duel and Compile as well so I think I will be safe.

[@jeremymullen7097]

You don't like cheese?

[@Pita26]

Completely unhinged to not like cheese.

[@scyldscefing3913]

Oh yes! It was a very good year for games.

[@jorisdelmarcel1480]

My surprise hits were also river of gold and magic number eleven

[@GourmetBurrito]

I know this is not the way to interrupt the first question, but Bus surprised me not in that I enjoyed it (I was expecting to enjoy it). Buuuuuut, it made ME surprise me. I knew I was a petty man. But man, I stacked a station full of passengers pretty early on partly because I didn't know how impactful that would be on our game and partly because I was trying to stop/get back at the player in the lead. But it ended up just stranding those poor helpless passengers as most of them were still there by the end of the game and the three of us playing were fighting even more viscously over the limited human resources. But to actually answer the question, I am kind of enthralled with Cthulhu Death May Die. I wanted to try because of all the hype it's received throughout the years but going in I was not sure. My favourite games tend to be like really tight auction/economic games not so much dice chuckers. And the production of it seemed excessive and annoying to set up. But I was pleasantly surprised that finding the right tiles or mixing and matching episodes with elder god is pretty straight forward. And the gameplay is quick, the stakes ramp u[p even quicker, and the humour is understated in the best way. In one of the games I was desperately trying to get one of the characters to "feel the colour" so that I could get my cow to mutate into a six-legged cow as if that was what was going to save me

[@heathercarter9741]

I buy games, and they'll sit on my shelf for a while before I get to them. Im just playing games I got for Christmas of last year 😂 I just opened Santas Workshop, from last year go play this December and my family is really loving it. I think our familys 😊most played games this year so far have been Lets Go to Japan, Tenpenny Parks and River Valley Glassworks.

[@zippy5131]

Oh my word.... I've not played Auzstralia yet and all the expansions or Northlands... So very little time with other projects. But hey next year. Have a great Christmas all the watch it played team and a very drunken board game argument new year.

[@EltWilder]

Who doesn’t like cheese. I can’t trust the judgment of such people. In my opinion. 😂😂😂

[@prorom27]

USAns, where my Santorini?

[@ThymeKeeper]

I love the way board games create an emergent narrative, but I don't care for reading the story. You can only read it for the first time once. If the game just relies on the written text it's going to have a very limited shelf life for me, no matter how well written it is.

[@ThymeKeeper]

People expect the "best of " lists at the end of the year. Some channels will do "top ten of 2024" in July of 2025, which makes logical sense, but absolutely won't get the same number of views. People are stunningly predictable that way.

[@WhatUpRob]

What annoys me about top x lists of all-time is any game that moves down 43 to 60 for example for the fact “it didn’t get to the table”. To me that is irrelevant. If you know the game is great because of past experience, and even if you like new games, you can know if the new game stands up to the now old bad game. But just because the old game hasn’t hit the table it’s now not as good. Complete poodoo.