Board Games

The biggest single movement this week belongs to a Kickstarter. Defenders of Hogwarts, the Harry Potter deck-builder designed by MinaLima - the studio behind the original film’s graphic props - jumped from #13 to #3 in one week, a ten-position climb that tracks almost exactly with the campaign going live. Kickstarter launches reliably generate this kind of hotness burst; the question is whether the underlying interest holds into next week once the announcement noise settles. ...

Ark Nova is one of the most remarkable games of the decade. It sits at BGG rank #2, carries a staggering 8.54 rating from over 100,000 voters, and packs a 3.80 weight that rewards players who don’t mind genuinely working for their payoff. You’re running a modern zoological establishment - building enclosures, acquiring animals from across the globe, supporting conservation projects - using a brilliant action card system where each card’s power is determined by its position in a row that shifts with every use. ...

The BGG Hotness this week belongs to a video game franchise. Kingdom Come: Deliverance - The Board Game sits at #1, and a second board game adaptation of the same franchise - set during the Hussite Wars - takes #2. Two tabletop versions of the same video game series debuting on the hotness in the same week is unusual. It hasn’t happened with this kind of franchise crossover before on this list, at least not in recent memory. ...

Two stories dominated this week’s BGG Hotness, and they both involve games doing something unusual. Concordia: Special Edition debuted at #1 while Concordia - the base game from 2013 - climbed fifteen spots to #5. Two versions of the same title occupying the top five simultaneously is the kind of anomaly that stands out even in a high-turnover week. The second story belongs to Harmonies and its expanding universe: three entries from the same franchise appeared on the list at once, with two new expansions - Pulse and Crescendo - both debuting in a single week. Ten new entries arrived. Ten others departed. Last week’s #1, Wondrous Creatures, tumbled thirteen spots. It was a messy, eventful week. ...

Something unusual happened this week. Wondrous Creatures vaulted from #11 to the top of the BGG Hotness - and simultaneously, its brand-new expansion Winterfall debuted at #8. A base game and its expansion occupying the hotness simultaneously is rare enough to be worth noting. Seven new entries replaced seven departures, including Stonesaga, War of the Dragon: The Wheel of Time, and Earthborne Trailblazer - all of which had been generating real buzz just a week ago. The turnover is sharp, and the stories buried in the data are worth digging into. ...

Brass: Birmingham is, by every measurable standard, the best board game ever made. It holds BGG Rank #1, carries an 8.56 average rating from nearly 60,000 voters, and packs a 3.86 weight that rewards players who actually want to think hard for two hours. You’re a competing industrialist in 1770-1870 Birmingham, building cotton mills, coal mines, iron works, and canals - then tearing it all up and doing it again in the rail era. The hand management is elegant, the resource chain is punishing in the best way, and every move ripples outward in ways you only fully appreciate after losing to someone who built beer earlier than you. ...

The designer of Dominion just put a moon colony through a blender - and the hobby is watching. Moon Colony Bloodbath by Donald X. Vaccarino storms to #1 this week, while Terraria: The Board Game, which owned that throne just three weeks ago, has already vanished from the list entirely. That’s the Hotness in a nutshell: brutal, fast, and completely unsentimentalabout last week’s darlings. Thirteen of the twenty spots are brand-new entries - one of the biggest shakeups in recent memory - and the stories buried in this week’s data are genuinely worth digging into. ...

Here is a game that does almost everything right. It has a gorgeous table presence with vibrant Japanese artwork. It has a deeply satisfying central mechanism that is unlike anything else in the hobby. It has tremendous replayability through a modular board. It is designed by one of Japan’s most talented designers. It sits at #156 on BGG, rated 7.79 by nearly 14,000 people, with a strategy game rank of #116. ...

Everyone knows the “dudes on a map” genre. You plonk miniatures on territories, build armies, and smash your neighbours until someone controls enough stuff to win. Blood Rage does it. Kemet does it. Risk has been doing it since your grandparents were young. Inis does something different. It puts warriors on a map, gives you every tool to fight - and then makes winning through combat almost impossible. This is the area control game that rewards the diplomat, the reader of the room, the player who knows when not to act. And it’s been quietly sitting at a 7.8 rating on BGG with 23,000 ratings while its louder cousins steal all the attention. ...

Last week, Lairs was sitting comfortably on the throne at #1. This week? It’s plummeted to #41. That’s not a fall from grace - that’s falling off a cliff, bouncing off several ledges, and landing in a ravine. In its place, Terraria: The Board Game has dug, fought, and crafted its way to the top of the Hotness - fuelled by a wave of fresh reviews including No Pun Included’s delightfully titled “We Could Not Finish Terraria: The Board Game.” ...