It is really difficult to compare group campaign games against solo or competitive games, however this is my ranked list of favourite games, based on how i feel overall about them including gameplay, theme and artwork, co-operative or solo experience, or offering the most ongoing excitement of expanding content. These are the games i own against which newcomers are judged (end of previous few years positions bracketed – review links added to the game name).
1 (1,1,-,-,-,-). Oathsworn – a co-operative tactical campaign adventure which is driven by a flowing card hand management system. The game has amazing miniatures with many huge creatures, and mixes an involving storyline with city exploration followed by tactical boss battles. The free company characters are varied, and this is one of the greatest campaign games around both for quality, story and content.
2 (2,2,1,1,1,1). Lord of the Rings LCG – a long term favourite solo game offering so much variety from all the different quests and deckbuilding support cards. It requires some expansion collecting to really shine, and is a challenging game with elements of storyline included. The artwork and theme is amazing, and as the largest individual game collection i have, it is such an immersive experience.
3 (3,3,2,2,2,2). Too Many Bones – a chip and dice based adventure, with high quality components and heroes that each feel completely different in their skills and play style. This game offers a blend of character progression, adventuring, and tactical battles featuring some great encounter fights. With amazing production and neat dice building mechanism, it is a premium product to own and play.
4 (4,4,3,3,4,8). Runebound 3rd Edition – an adventure game played across a world map, where you will level up your hero in one session by completing quests and visiting locations to find new skills and equipment. Combat is undertaken by unique token throwing, and a doom tracker will be counting down your final enemy encounter. A superb fantasy quest game that i really enjoy playing solo.
5 (5,15,14,16,7,7). Gloomhaven / Frosthaven – a legacy campaign game and one of the best group games i have played. With a dungeon theme, each scenario is a puzzle to solve with limited cards before you run out of life energy. Its hand management and character interaction is really rewarding. Jaws of the Lion provided easier set up and a more cohesive storyline. Frosthaven added more complexity and city building.
6 (6,5,16,18,15,12). Silver Tower / Blackstone Fortress / Cursed City – co-operative dungeon quest series set in different location themes, using a dice allocation mechanic. It requires modelling and painting to look its best, and sits at the core of my love for the hobby side of my gaming, although its overall gameplay is beaten elsewhere. Silver Tower and Cursed City are my favourite sets.
7 (7,6,5,8,6,6). Descent Legends of the Dark / Descent 2nd Edition – co-operative dungeon crawler series that utilises an interactive app to build campaign stories. Featuring excellent models, tiles and now in Legends three dimensional terrain, this game looks great and is fun and easy to play, majoring on exploration and adventure. Legends has improved the campaign but 2nd Edition remains more versatile.
8 (9,10,9,7,9,9). Thunderstone Quest – deckbuilding with a great fantasy dungeon theme, with numerous quest packs available to expand the game, and dungeon rooms to delve into. The artwork, depth of play and the ability to customise each dungeon or play random makes it a game i really enjoy. Quest is now better than ever with the new barricades solo and co-operative mode available.
9 (13,16,18,21,19,-). Hexplore It – co-operative adventures with large map exploration, events and quests to build your characters and overcome the realm nemesis. It’s roots are in roleplaying, so you will be building up your stats using neat write and wipe character boards. With different scenario themes being released, and new campaign story adventures, this series is becoming even bigger and better over time.
10 (8,7,6,5,5,-). Everdell – the most beautiful card worker placement competitive game, where not only is the artwork stunning but the gameplay is simple and elegant. You build your own cute village of interactive dwellings and creatures that is so satisfying and different each time. The interaction between cards you choose is excellent and i also find it really enjoyable as a solo game too.
11 (11,9,8,10,-,-). Tidal Blades – this worker placement game is set in a beautiful world on an island resort and features dice rolling and upgrading. Young heroes will undertake stunt challenges to impress the judges, progress up the champions board and earn victory points, whilst fighting off the monsters trying to invade the island. The game and theme is visually stunning and is great fun to play.
12 (12,11,4,-,-,-). Marvel Champions – a living card deck construction game where you play as your favourite superhero, flipping between your alter ego and hero states, and calling on your allies to support you to defeat a villain and thwart his plans. A great solo and co-op game where deckbuilding is light and easy and available expansion content is immense, creating character driven thematic experiences.
13 (10,8,7,4,3,5). Sword & Sorcery – this is a story led adventure campaign with some randomisation, a great game that has superb board tiles and nice models. It manages to offer neat game ideas and a deeper enemy intelligence, and expanded its content with a second huge new adventure set. This game has a great feeling of progression and adventure and heroes with their own unique character and abilities.
14 (14,14,13,13,12,11). Darkest Night 2nd Edition – a co-operative or solo game, where the world has been ravaged by the evil necromancer, and is covered in blights, tainting the seven core locations. With amazing production, this updated game version presents strategic choices but quick game turns and co-operative interplay, and has many great hero characters with excellent variations of card skills.
15 (15,13,19,14,14,14). Warhammer Quest (1995) – the original definitive dungeon crawl with the best additional roleplaying book found within a board game. It remains a light co-operative hack and slash experience, with random room and monster encounter elements that is still adored and is played by anyone, enabling you to build your own adventures. It benefits from having my long term nostalgia vote.
16 (-,-,-,-,-,-). Edge of Darkness – a competitive card crafting game, where you will build your action cards by drafting and sleeving them. Players will run guilds competing for power within the city by gaining wealth, influence, recruiting agents and defending against the enemies that attack via a cool cube tower system. A big box game that is great looking and has much variety through its many location tiles.
17 (16,12,12,11,8,4). Nemesis – a survival game on a dark space ship with an aliens theme. Each character has their own card deck and unique strengths and players have secret missions to complete, which can be co-operative or selfish, but helping each other is key to escaping. This game is filled with tension and drama, and features exploration and room reveals for a great dark exploration game.
18 (17,17,10,9,10,3). City of Kings – a clever mix of hero development and worker resource strategies, with battles against enemies that change their abilities each time they appear. This has a nice artwork style and some of the best hero player boards with branching character progression trees. A great game design with quests and storylines built in, and a favourite of mine for solo play.
19 (19,-,-,-,-,-). Eleven – a football manager game playable solo or competitive where you build up your club infrastructure, recruit players and engage match tactics while progressing up the league table. This is largely a euro card game with some dice rolling, and you embark on various individual scenarios while aiming for a high victory points total. This is the best football board game that i have found.
20 (20,18,11,22,18,18). 7th Continent – a unique exploration adventure card game where you reveal an island whilst searching for clues to banish a curse. Mixing a push your luck action deck with useful items to craft you are faced with continuous choices, and the combination of its puzzles and the storyline is unique. It is best played solo with a world map exploration and discovery hard to find elsewhere.
21 (21,21,17,12,11,-). Mage Knight – this exploration adventure game is considered one of the greatest solo games, but is a complex beast to learn and remember that means it gets played less than it should. It’s turn based card hand play is ultimately rewarding and addictive, and the newer ultimate edition brings together all the expansion content in one place, with it’s production quality improved.
22 (22,24,37,33,33,29). Heat / Flamme Rouge – card playing racing games which blend a simple to learn mechanics with some fairly basic strategic decisions. The latest Heat provides modular add ons which can increase the complexity and variation, plus it provides a solo legends mode. This game is fun, family friendly and builds on the simple play elements of Flamme Rouge.
23 (18,19,17,15,17,10). Vindication – a competitive island exploration game with cube resource management, this strategy game represents the journey of your hero regaining their honour. The components and artwork are amazingly good, and the combinations of places to go, companions and pets to recruit and different encounter paths will mean that every game feels a little different.
24 (23,20,-,-,-,-). Machina Arcana – a solo or co-operative story driven exploration game set within underground caverns with a Lovecraft horror theme. This game is tactical and features frequent interactions with elements of the map tiles, to make discoveries and progress the story through emerging chapters. It has superb artwork and varied monsters, together with excellent dashboards and dungeon rooms.
25 (24,29,25,-,-,-). Dice Throne – a dice battling game based on the yahtzee principals, with some light deckbuilding, where card help to mitigate or improve your rolls. Over time it has been enhanced to include a solo or co-operative adventure mode, with a dungeon crawl and boss fight, and then has moved into a marvel theme. This is a really fun game that is well designed that anyone can play with great characters and theme.
26 (25,25,20,20,24,21). Abyss – a card drafting game where your aim is to gain influence and rule the undersea world by recruiting sea lords to your cause. This has some of the best artwork and theme around and combines a simple set of actions with elements of pushing your luck. Choosing which lords to recruit and monsters to fight is so much fun, and expansions will improve the gameplay.
27 (26,26,21,23,21,15). Gloom of Kilforth – having some of the best artwork in any game, this is a solo or co-operative card quest game where you navigate a world where gloom is descending. Complete quests and build your abilities to take on the final demon before the world is lost forever. A beautiful and well constructed adventure game which will have different encounters each time you play.
28 (29,30,28,28,20,20). Aeon’s End – a solo or co-operative deckbuilding game, where you are fighting as mages to defend the city of Gravehold. This is a smooth game to play, and each nemesis boss enemy has a unique card deck and player board to make them more interesting than many other deckbuilder fights. The ease of set up and ability to reset quickly is a real bonus.
29 (30,31,20,26,25,23). Eldritch Horror – a operative story adventure game set in the Cthulhu horror fantasy world. This game features a doom countdown as heroes try to prevent the ancient one emerging and destroying the world. With a light story aspect, and a world board of locations to visit this game is relatively light but can be tough to beat but is always a great experience and has loads of expansions.
30 (-,-,-,-,-). Ashes Reborn – a solo or competitive deckbuilding game, where you choose a phoenixborn character and their re-built deck, which can be re-constructed, to battle against a chimera monster, or fight another player. Dice will be rolled and manipulated to provide a mana source for your spellcasting and ally recruitment. The artwork is really strong, and the new solo mode made it into a game i wanted to play.
Bubbling Under …
31 (28,23,15,6,-,-). Altar Quest – a dungeon questing game with modular adventures, paying homage to HeroQuest in its style and producing an excellent gaming experience with well themed hero card decks that create your character’s actions and abilities. Room object features, miniatures and artwork are all great, while playing scenarios is both tactical and great fun, but also can be a real challenge.
32 (31,28,27,26,19,13,-). Tainted Grail – a solo or cooperative story adventure, where you play as a flawed hero in a dying Arthurian land which is sinking into wyrdness. A mixture of exploration, survival and decision making lead you down branching paths to complete quests, find secret artefacts or learning hidden truths. The dark world is beautifully illustrated and has amazing miniatures too.
33 (27,22,-,-,-,-). Bardsung– a middle complexity co-operative dungeon crawler with amazing artwork, nice tiles and a big adventure book. Characters and enemies have great personality and the 20 sided dice mechanic keeps things simple, however relative positioning in the dungeon is important. This game has a more narrative campaign focus than many and with some excellent models, it is a great all rounder in this genre.
34 (32,28,27,17,16,19). Nemo’s War – a strategic solo game, where you choose an objective and navigate the oceans in the nautilus seeking adventure, finding treasures, sinking ships and risking yourself, ship and crew. With lots of dice rolling, together with plenty of mitigation and pushing your luck, it is a really great but tough solo game, and the adventure story cards add amazing theme while you play.