My kids are too young for a lot of cool games, but we all enjoy Karak. It is playable for our youngest (5 years) and the gamble part gave everyone a chance to win.
I quite like Nova Luna as a game that everyone can play, but that has a fierce optimization aspect, if you are into that.
I was pleasantly surprised by Lost Ruins of Arnak - I don't think there is any other game that has this combination of worker placement and deck building. I was a bit worried how the very low number of turns would interact with the deck building elements (generally cycling through the deck very often is expected in that genre), but it works surprsingly well!
You should check out Framework too if you liked Nova Luna. I found it a little easier to understand visually.
Thanks for pointing that out to me. I didn't know they made another game using a similar mechanic. I will certainly check it out!
Uwe rosenberg made 3, nova luna, sagani and framework, i didn‘t like nova luna but think sagani is good (have not played framework)
We sadly did not like Arnak, it felt a lot like min/maxing from turn one. We had a couple of 2 and 3 player sessions but none was very convincing.
Oh yeah it is certainly a bit on the dry optimization side of things. I haven't played it enough to be certain, but it definitely feels like there is some degree of snowballing going on depending on how your first few turns went.
I really enjoy big campaign games, so my cult of the new games are Frosthaven and Oathsworn. I think both are fantastic games and I'm enjoying them a whole lot. I think Aeon Trespass is also going to go on that list, but that's currently sitting on a shelf unplayed--only because I'm too busy with the other two mentions, though!
I made this list for a post over at !gaming@beehaw.org so I figured I'd reuse it here too:
Oh I will have to have a look at Space Station Phoenix, looks super interesting.
I am super mainstream and my collection is rather modest. For two players I really like Splendor Duel
Otherwise, I have to go with Clank Catacombs - I found it a really cool addition to the game. I have not tried Legacy yet but I have been told that it borrows some components from it as well.
Great call on Splendor Duel, should have been on my list too!
My single complaint about that game is that I can't quite fit both the original Splendor and Duel into the Duel box. But I can do the next best thing which is keeping both in the original box.
Space Station Phoenix is on BGA too. I prefer it on the table though, easier to see the available sectors, the diplomacy board and player ships. On BGA they had to be tucked under separate tabs to make it fit on the screen. And it's fun to put the little aliens into their cozy new homes.
I have to say that I prefer most games on the table :) BGA is ok for some long distance sessions but I do prefer a nice atmosphere around the boardgame.
I've just gotten Earth a few weeks ago and played it a few times already. For me it completely replaces Wingspan for anything but a really casual / short play. By removing all the elements of Wingspan that forced sequential turns (Birdhouse and Market) they lost nothing of value and managed to build a game where you can do a ludicrous amount of actions each game and have practically no downtime. Then they added a ton more scoring opportunities, some light asymmetry and a lot more variability, all for barely any additional complexity.
Oh, I tried this for a few games on boardgamearena. I quite liked it, but the cards you draw seemed very influential in whether they fit the fauna cards/personal objectives or not. Do you find it holds up when playing it repeatedly?
I mean yeah. But it's really no worse than the card based scoring goals in Wingspan. There are a certain percentage of cards that will fit and the rest will not. There's a certain amount of "digging" for those cards. But the nice part is that as part of that digging you may very well draw a better alternative where as in Wingspan you had to deliberately play to draw more scoring cards.
I feel that having so much more scoring options in play puts less emphasis on trying to make any particular one happen. You're likely going to find something that fits just by chance. There are also goals that give you points off ANY player's tableau. So if you draw a scoring that wants lots of rocky terrain cards and you don't have much but your opponent happened to assemble a ton of them: easy, points for you.
Great Western Trail was new to us when we bought the 2nd edition and it's a top 5 now.
Tiletum -- we really love Lorenzo il Magnifico and Tiletum although a bit lighter is just as fun.
Furnace is a neat filler. I'm interested to see what the expansion adds and whether it elevates it to a mainstay.
I like your picks! Make sure to check out Newton if haven't already. I almost passed it over because of the boring looking box and only picked it up because of a sale and "well, it's a Luciani, can't be too bad".
It's one of our favorites now. It has tracks and map (and a tree!) similar to Tiletum, card market and play which is different from Lorenzo but very cool in its own way and neat interactions between parts of the board. The 2nd edition has some expansions included that are easy to mix in. There is also a digital version on Yucata.
What's your usual player count? I skipped Furnace so far because I am not sure how well it would work at 2.
Thanks for the suggestion, I'll check it out.
We play mostly at 2. Furnace functions, but obviously isn't its best at 2 players. It becomes a tiny bit Chess like b/c you can often see exactly, "If I place this number there, that'll force this and there will force that". I still quite enjoy it and would play it for a quick game or two on an evening when we're not up for crunching a bigger title. But I don't know that I would recommend it for just 2p (unless you found a good deal).