Card and Dice Poll 2021
Christopher Chung – Designer
Notable Games: Lanterns: The Harvest Festival, Spell Smashers
Twitter: @cchunggames
Selections
Twilight Imperium 4: Absolutely takes the heart of a space opera and just implements it to the finest degree with a whole lot of politicking and alliances, backstabbing, vicious combat, it takes a day to play but so worth it to do so.
Concordia: You’re playing one card per turn. That’s all you’re doing, but there’s so many layers and ways to score that you always feel like you can do something productive, and at the same time, critically impact your opponent’s well-laid plans.
Codenames: Great party game that does its job so well in that it’s dead simple to explain, and gets people thinking critically about every word they say and every word they point to.
Rising Sun: A perfect mix of action selection, area control and rubber-banded combat, plus the production quality by CMON was bar none for this game.
Hive: So many chess-like games out there, but this one takes the cake of best chess-like game. With so many bugs to account for, who knows what your opponent would be planning?
No, Thanks!: Such a deceptively evil game. You’re calling out numbers! You get card after card! You…can’t get 25 to fill that gap between 24 and 26. Uh-oh.
Parade: Another deeply deceptive card game where you want to score the least points from your collected cards, with fantastic artwork and production (in the 2nd version!)
Las Vegas: Doesn’t get any better than area-control with dice-rolling. Super easy to explain and love the tension with each player’s turn.
Teotihuacan: City of Gods: It’s so beefy, my head spins with everything that goes on, and I don’t think I’ll ever win a game in this in my lifetime, but it’s super-crunchy and satisfying with the dice-as-worker placement and the various ways to score victory points. Plus the chunky tiles!
Star Realms: I don’t think there’s a better feeling of getting to run a huge fleet of ships into your opponent’s unprotected face other than this game. With only 4 factions to learn and countless ways to expand your game, this replaces the need to ever buy into Magic: The Gathering (and this was also designed by pro-Magic players!)