It is easy to look at casual games like a monolith - that, no matter what, when you go over to a friend's house, Apples to Apples will make an appearance. Who would've thought that Vlaada Chvátil would bring the world a classic party game? The sort of thing that gets stocked in supermarkets? Somehow, the designer who made Through The Ages and Galaxy Trucker - arcane, wonderful tabletop experiences for hardcore tabletop lifers - arrived in 2016 with a lightweight, sub-£20 box that has already been recorded as an all-time, ultra-mainstream modern classic. Codenames A party game made with designer pedigree With the talent of designer Vlaada Chvátil behind its clever word puzzle, Codenames became one of the most influential board games in years upon its release in 2015. X-Wing remains a beloved institution, so let's hope that lesson isn't forgotten anytime soon.īuy Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game on Amazon US or Amazon UK. In an industry that so frequently favours huge handfuls of dice and £100 unpainted orcs, Fantasy Flight democratised the minis experience for total newcomers. You receive three pre-assembled ships, a handful of tokens and plenty of cards to create your own little intergalactic skirmish on the kitchen table. Right out of the box, X-Wing's starter set lets you immediately jump into deep-space dogfights. Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game The miniatures game that welcomed everyone to the table Saving the hassle of assembling and painting models with its pre-made miniatures, X-Wing captured the speed and tension of Star Wars' dogfights. Alternatively, spiritual successor Project NISEI is available in print-and-play form on a pay-what-you-like basis. That was a revolution, and the LCG format has persisted unabated since.Īndroid: Netrunner is out of print, but secondhand copies can be found here and there. Netrunner was a great game for a whole bunch of design reasons, but the thing that stands out in retrospect was its ‘living card game’ mantra: the idea that buyers would know exactly what was in each pack before they bought them. So thank god for Android: Netrunner, which came along in the early 2010s and showed the world that publishers could make the CCG space a little bit kinder. The business model - which asks players to cash their paychecks on endless booster packs in hopes of securing the one card they actually want - is willfully exploitative. Android: Netrunner The card game that changed how card games are sold Gone but not forgotten: despite its own cancellation in 2018, Netrunner's influential living card game format has been picked up by a number of subsequent releases.Ĭollectible card games are expensive. The post-Catan era has been a truly bountiful time for the hobby. There's no easy way to balance all of those factors, but generally, we tried to focus on the games that felt like a real beginning of something - be that an aesthetic, a design decision or a more metatextual wrinkle in tabletop culture. There's been plenty of mechanical innovation in the last 25 years, but the way board games are made, advertised and produced is also radically different in our communal, crowdfunded economy. There are so many different ways a game can be influential. Pandemic Legacy: Season 1: The game that changed what board games could be.Cards Against Humanity: The game that made tabletop fashionable.Zombicide: Kickstarter's first golden child.XCOM: The Board Game: The game that merged iPhones with dice rolls.Star Realms: A huge, cinematic experience - in nothing more than a deck of cards.7 Wonders: The card game that put drafting on the map.Codenames: A party game made with designer pedigree.Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game: The miniatures game that welcomed everyone to the table.Android: Netrunner: The card game that changed how card games are sold.Or, perhaps more accurately, the most influential board games since the dawn of the hobby's new golden age.
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Instead, we've come up with a tabulation of the most influential tabletop experiences since the release of Settlers of Catan in 1995. How does anyone quantify chess, or Go, or any of the other ancient pillars of strategy that have informed literal centuries of game design? How can anyone compare Gloomhaven to, I don't know, Monopoly? We've decided to excise that problem out of the list.
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A list of the most influential board games of all time is about as boring as it is impossible.