This is a summary of the board games that saw my most interest, investment, hobby time, playing and enjoyment in 2025. It is not necessarily a direct reflection of my all time favourite games. This was a year for crowdfunding arrivals.
New Games Received : Arydia , Tidal Blades Adventure , Elder Scrolls , Nemesis Retaliation , Unsettled , Kingdoms Forlorn , Darkwater
Games Sold : Trudvang Legends , Agemonia , Lancaster , Forest Shuffle , Edge of Darkness
1. Arydia – took the year by storm following its spring arrival, playing the whole campaign story, with its clever episode style, card based storylines and role playing character builds. Very fun and an amazing experience and my most played game of the year.
2. Hybrid – the first quarter of the year i was building and painted my replacement set of this game, searching out second hand items. It has not seen a lot of actual play, however collecting the set again was important to me.
3. Gloomhaven 2nd Edition– a return to this great game with a new group and new edition. This has improved graphics and better starting character cards, and remains such a great group experience. Its simpler city approach is better than Frosthaven’s complexity. Characters are painted as they appear in our adventures.
4. Descent 2nd Edition – finally got around to painting the Shadows of Nerekhall expansion, also purchasing Chains that Rust, Guardians of Deephall and Crown of Destiny expansions. This is a great dungeon crawl due to the artwork and all the different ways you can play it.
5. Cursed City – continued to paint expansion miniatures including the giant fell bats and the flesh eater addition including the marrowscroll herald. With Darkwater now released my attention on adding to this game next year may be reducing.
6. Marvel Champions – still playing this game solo and adding expansions, this year completing X-Men i wanted (Phoenix, Gambit) and as older heroes went out of stock i had to grab a few more (Ms Marvel, Hulk, Quicksilver, Vision). I am still collecting selectively, but the only newer hero added was Falcon.
7. Elder Scrolls – a highly anticipated game which while getting a fair amount of play, is a slight dissappointment from a campaign and story perspective and it could not topple Too Many Bonus as my favourite Chip Theory Game.
8. Ashes Reborn – added more of the Chimera solo expansions to my set, it remains a solo game i enjoy bringing out periodically, but i consider my purchases here largely complete now and i am not adding the new core set Ascendancy.
Here is a look at the previous years > 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016 and 2015