A couple of weeks ago we announced our nominees for our 11th Annual Board Game Awards. As always, it was rough even choosing which games to nominate. Since then, we’ve put our heads together, tested the games, and come up with a consensus.
Today we are excited to announce the winners of our 2023 Board Game Awards. As usual, the voting was difficult, and some categories were extremely tight. But our editorial staff (with input from our readers) have made their selections. So, without further ado, here are the winners of our 11th Annual Board Game Grow Awards. Congratulations to all the winners and nominees.
2023 Board Game Award Winners
Best Cooperative Game
Sky Team
Designers: Luc Rémond
Hachette, Scorpion Masqué
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One of our Best of Gen Con 2023 picks makes its return, winning our award for Best Cooperative board game. Sky Team tasks 2 players with landing an airplane successfully in a variety of scenarios. Using a dice-placement mechanism, players need to work together to control the different aspects of the plane. You’ll assign dice to spaces in your cockpit to balance the axis of your plane, control its speed, deploy the flaps, extend the landing gear, and contact the control tower to clear your path. It’s definitely a unique game and a great play experience.
Runner Up: Unmatched Adventures: Tales to Amaze
Best Game Expansion
Lost Ruins of Arnak:
The Missing Expedition
Designers: Elwen & Mín
Czech Games Edition
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Our 2020 Game of the Year stormed back last year with its second expansion, and it was a great one. The Missing Expedition not only adds more content for your games of Lost Ruins of Arnak, but adds in a solo/cooperative campaign. We were skeptical of how well this new gameplay mode would work, but it’s surprisingly solid. The gameplay fits right in with the core loop of Lost Ruins of Arnak, letting you experience the game through much better solo mode than originally came with the game.
Runner Up: Ark Nova: Marine Worlds
Best Tactical/Combat Game
Snap Ships Tactics
Designers: Josh Derksen
Snap Ships
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One of the most innovative games of the year was also one of our favorite tactical games. In Snap Ship Tactics, you will literally build your ship out of snap-together pieces before customizing them and sending them off to skirmish your opponents’ ships. You can follow the build plans for each ship, or just customize it to your heart’s desire. Beyond the game’s great toy factor is its fantastic gameplay. It uses an action-cube system to activate the different parts of your ship, letting you fire guns, maneuver, or even launch missiles. You’re required to wait for your weapons to cool down to use them again, which adds a level of strategic play.
Runner Up: Votes for Women
Best Production Values
Voidfall
Designers: Nigel Buckle, Dávid Turczi
Mindclash Games
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Publisher Mindclash Games is no stranger to making good-looking games. They are all well-produced games that fall into the heavy, chunky euro range. 2022 brought us Voidfall, a sci-fi 4x game that brings that popular genre to euro gamers. Its complex gameplay is matched by its incredible production values. With art by the always excellent Ian O’Toole, ship miniatures, upgraded bits, and just an overall fanatic presentation, Voidfall definitely sets the bar high for a great-looking euro game.
Runner Up: The Castles of Burgundy: Special Edition
Best Thematic Game
Tamashii: Chronicle of Ascend
Designer: Kamil ‘Sanex’ Cieśla, Robert Plesowicz, Łukasz Włodarczyk
Awaken Realms Lite
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From the Awaken Realms sub-brand comes Tamashii: Chronicle of Ascend, a cyberpunk-themed game set far in the future. Tamashii: Chronicle of Ascend combines bag building, pattern matching, and exploration in a game with branching paths and a diverse range of scenarios. In the world of Tamashii, you jump from body to body as you try to take down the AI that has taken over the world. The missions are only loosely connected but can be played in any order, leaving plenty for players to explore during their games. Its unique game play and interesting world make for a really fun play experience.
Runner Up: Resident Evil: The Board Game
Best Strategy/Euro Game
Hegemony:
Lead Your Class to Victory
Designers: Vangelis Bagiartakis, Varnavas Timotheou
Hegemonic Project Games
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Hegemony is a wildly asymmetric game where 2-4 players play out the modern industrial struggles among the working, middle, and capitalist classes, along with the bureaucratic state, in an effort to garner the most class-specific rewards and win the game. Capitalists want money and a neoliberal outcome, workers want good jobs, good health, and a socialist outcome, and the middle class wants a little of each, while the state seeks to perpetuate itself by maintaining a content population and sufficient tax flow. Based on academic political theory, Hegemony is a big game—so carve out a serious chunk of time, especially on your first play.
Runner Up: Darwin’s Journey
Best Card Game
Imperial Miners
Designer: Tim Armstrong
Portal Games
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Portal Games newest offering is a card game set in its Imperial Settlers universe. Imperial Miners is a light engine-building game that offers excellent card play. Players will be creating chains of cards as they dig mines, and each new card will activate all cards above it in the chain. The game also has some solid replay value thanks to the different factions of the card sets, creating new combos each time you play.
Runner Up: Star Wars: The Deckbuilding Game
Best Game from a Small Publisher
Kinfire Chronicles: Night’s Fall
Designer: Kevin Wilson
Incredible Dream
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The first game from new publisher Incredible Dream was an excellent one. Kinfire Chronicles: Night’s Fall is a thematic dungeon crawler that will have players working together to defend the city of Din’Lux. In addition to its excellent production values, Kinfire Chronicles stands out because of how much players need to work together to win the battles. Combat is handled through card play, and many of the cards in your deck are only played on other players’ turns to give them a boost. Veteran game designer Kevin Wilson has created both an interesting world and some innovative gameplay with Kinfire Chronicles.
Runner Up: Earthborne Rangers
Best Solo Game
Legacy of Yu
Designer: Shem Phillips
Garphill Games
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The Yellow River is rising, but in Legacy of Yu, that’s not the only flood you have to worry about. This solo-only campaign tasks you with constructing canals and fending off a steady deluge of barbarian attacks as your village grows. Each session takes about an hour to play, and the campaign is designed with a self-balancing mechanism that keeps the challenge exciting. Designer Shem Phillips has made a self-contained and uniquely thematic entry for the solo crowd to enjoy. It’s easy to learn, hard to master, and certain to have you on the edge of defeat as threats crest your village shores. Legacy of Yu was a mainstay on my table for the entirety of its campaign and made Brandon’s top ten games of 2023.
Runner Up: Votes for Women
Best Family Game
Wandering Towers
Designers: Michael Kiesling, Wolfgang Kramer
Capstone Games
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Another one of our staff picks from Gen Con 2023 that has made the best-of list is Wandering Towers from Capstone Games. The gameplay couldn’t be more simple: Everyone’s wizards sit atop a series of stackable towers, each hoping to reach the one black keep. Players play two cards out of their hand of three each turn, with each card performing some version of “move wizard x spaces” or “move tower x spaces”. If a tower covers any wizards, they are imprisoned until the tower is moved off of them again. As soon as a player drops their wizard into the black keep, the keep moves to another location. Players aim to be the first player to get all their wizards in the keep. Those are all the rules. Wandering Towers is a magical mashup of three card monte and Camel Up, it’s delightful to play, and here’s the kicker: It plays 1-6 players, and it takes just 30 minutes to play.
Runner Up: Imperial Miners
Best Reprint/ Reimplementation
RA: Deluxe Edition
Designer: Reiner Knizia
25th Century Games
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What else is there that needs to be said about one of the very best auctions games ever made. Despite debuting in 1999, the gameplay in Reiner Knizia’s RA still holds up, and it’s a masterpiece of game design. This new edition from 25th Century Games upgrades both the art and the components. Featuring beautiful artwork from Ian O’Toole, and chunky wooden bits, this is the version that this great game desevers.
Runner Up: The Castles of Burgundy: Special Edition
Game of the Year
Thunder Road: Vendetta
Designers: Brett Myers, Dave Chalker
Restoration Games
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We lost track of how many times the BGQ team played Thunder Road: Vendetta at Gen Con last year… but it was a lot. And every time there were laughs and excitement coming from the table. Thunder Road: Vendetta is a remake of the 1986 Milton Bradley game Thunder Road. Restoration Games has breathed new life into this classic as the gameplay is upgraded for the modern era. Players race on a desert track, trying to be the first to get to the finish line … or just the last to survive. Any strategy in Thunder Road: Vendetta goes out the window pretty early, as this is a highly tactical, somewhat random game. Yet the pure carnage just leads to so many enjoyable moments that it’s easily our Game of the Year.
Runner Up: Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West
Note: Per award rules, because it won Game of the Year, Thunder Road: Vendetta was removed from consideration from other award categories except Best Production Values.
