According to my BGStats game app, I played 78 different games last year. That’s a game and a half for every week of the year! While many were repeats, I did manage to get in many new-to-me games.

Here are my top new-to-me games of 2018, in no particular order.

One Night Ultimate Alien

Okay, I lied. Of all the games we played last year, the One Night Ultimate series of games definitely topped the list, with Alien taking the cake between the different version of this game (Werewolf, Vampire, and Daybreak). This is a fun, social deduction game that can be played in under 10 minutes. Each player is given a role (which is secret), and the group tries to figure out who the aliens are, while the aliens try to keep their role a secret. It’s easy to teach and learn, and you’ll be pleasantly surprised how everyone gets into the game. Alien offers a randomness factor that the other versions don’t, which makes it my favourite, but this version also requires the phone app when the others don’t need it (I do recommend using it regardless so that everyone can play).

Charterstone

The hubby gifted this to me for Christmas in 2017, and I will admit I was skeptical at first. But he gets to say “I told you so.” Charterstone is a resource management legacy game, where players are building a town in the hopes of it becoming the new capital city. We enjoyed our first play-through of this game that we bought both a recharge pack (which allows you to replay the game at a fraction of the cost of buying a new version) and we bought a new copy of the game. We’re also playing another copy that our friend bought.

Pandemic Legacy Season 2

Pandemic is one of my all-time favourite games. So it’s no surprise that we had to play the Legacy versions. Our Thursday night game group loved Season 1, so we snapped up Season 2 as soon as it was released. Gotta say, Season 2 definitely kicked it out of the park, and was even better than its predecessor. Having said that, I am tempted to pick up a new copy of Season 1 and go again.

Century: Spice Road

This was recommended to me by my FLGS. It’s another resource building/deck building hybrid where you buy action cards that help you get resources which ultimately allows you to take goal cards (and victory points). It’s a fairly fast-paced game that satisfies the strategy part of the brain, while also being less than an hour to play.

Okanagan: Valley of Lakes

The hubby and I saw this game at Terminal City Tabletop Convention 2018 and were both interested in playing it, so we borrowed a copy from TCTC’s library. Within the first round of play we knew this game was meant for us, so Blair went and bought it. It’s a tile laying game somewhat reminiscent of Carcasonne, but with a totally different scoring mechanism. Also, I was totally charmed by the Okanagan theme (since the Okanagan Valley is here in BC).

Railroad Ink

This one was a Christmas gift for 2018, and we immediately loved the simplicity of this game. You have to try to create circuits using railroads and roads; the more exits you connect, and the longer certain route types you have, the more points you get. But the pieces are random dice rolls, so you could end up in a disaster in city planning. It’s a quick, portable game… another easy to teach, easy to learn.

Terraforming Mars

I was introduced to this one by my brother-in-law. It’s a resource management style game with a space theme. There are different ways that you can win. It’s a much longer, crunchier game, but once you’ve played a few rounds it’s easy to pick up. The only thing I don’t like about this game is that the rulebook is really badly written, so I’d recommend using one of the many how-to-play videos on Youtube.

Were there any games you tried for the first time in 2018 and loved? Tell me about them in the comments!