Obligatory Favorite Games 2016 Edition Post Part III: My Favorite Games: Top 10 List (Games 1-5)

Now we move on to games 1-5 of my top 10 favorite games. These are games that I would play anytime I had the opportunity. While it was quite difficult to really narrow down my games to a top 10 list, I feel that the top 5 were pretty easy to determine. This is always a fun exercise working out my favorite games and this time was no different. Before moving on to the “best of the best” feel free to take a look at my previous couple of posts in the series.

My Favorite Games: Honorable Mentions (2016)

My Favorite Games: Top 10 List: Games 6-10 (2016)

Okay, now we move on to the top 5 games that are on my top 10 list. I love all of these games and am kind of looking forward to see where things shake up next year. But, that is for next year, let’s take a look at where things are this time!

#5 – Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 (Z-Man Games)

Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 is a co-operative, set collection, Legacy-style game designed by Matt Leacock and Rob Daviau and published by Z-Man Games. Em and I played this game with a couple of friends of ours and had an absolutely amazing time. This game is an experience and that is the best way of putting it. All of the players get to play out a game of Pandemic that takes on Legacy gameplay where the board changes along with the different mechanisms of the game. The game is played over a year period of time where you can play anywhere from 12 to 24 games during the experience. I love pretty much everything about this game. I suppose though, in the end, this game would probably be even higher if it had more replay. However, due to the Legacy mechanisms that are in play, this game can only be played through once and then it is complete. That being said, even though this is a bit of a negative, this game is still my #5 game of all time!

#4 – Fields of Arle (Z-Man Games)

Fields of Arle is a worker placement, economic, farming game designed by Uwe Rosenberg and published by Z-Man Games. This is a two-player only game that finds each player building up their own farm in the small community in East Frisia, Germany. This is truly a sandbox game with worker placement elements as each player will be placing their workers on different action spaces in both the summer and winter months. These different actions give you a ton of different options and routes to victory as you use your workers to cut peat, deliver goods, breed animals, etc. This game is absolutely amazing and so far is my favorite of Uwe’s games. I know that there is a planned expansion and it is an insta-buy for me when it is finally release. This game makes its way to #4 on my top 10 list.

#3 – Imperial Settlers (Portal Games)

Imperial Settlers is a card-drafting, multi-use card, hand management, civilization building game designed by Ignacy Trzewiczek and published by Portal Games. This game has been one which we took to right away and have enjoyed every play of it. I love how each faction plays completely differently and gives a totally different flavor to their deck. The Atlantean’s deck that came out last year really made things even more interesting and put technology into the game which put some new and interesting mechanisms into play. I love this game. The artwork, the hand management, and the feel of the game all put it up very high on my list and I think it is going to probably stay up here for a long time. The one game that could possibly knock this one down is 51st State: Master Set which takes the ideas of the original 51st State and Imperial Settlers and really streamlines the mechanisms along with a very cool post-apocalyptic theme. This game makes it onto the list at game #3.

#2 – Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn (Plaid Hat Games)

Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn is a hand management, dice rolling, and battle card game in the vein of Magic: The Gathering. It is designed by Isaac Vega and published by Plaid Hat Games. I saw he early art on this game and was immediately fascinated by the world that Vega and artist, Fernanda Suarez, were creating. What has been created is an absolutely amazing, expandable card game where you get to use dice as mana while you get to actually choose your starting hand. In my personal estimation, this game has cancelled quite of a bit of the problems that I had with Magic. I don’t like the heavy luck in the card draw at the beginning and hate how sometimes you just can’t pull land to save your life. In Ashes you get to roll the dice in the beginning and are able to mitigate them with simple discards of cards in your hand or off the top of the deck. This gives the game less of a luck factor even though there is dice rolling. In the end I suppose it is preference, but Ashes is my choice for this style of game and it ends up as #2 on my top 10 list.

#1 – Seasons (Libellud/Asmodee)

Seasons is a hand management, card drafting, dice rolling game designed by Régis Bonnessée and published by Libellud with Asmodee. This has been my favorite game almost since the moment I played it. This game is one of the most beautiful games I’ve ever played as it features the amazing art of Naïade and the incredible components that Libellud is known for. This game has some of the best dice in any game that I’ve ever played. They are big and chunky and are very fun to roll. This game also has some of the most fun card combos of any game as you are able to take a hand of ten cards in the beginning and have an awesome drafting phase with your opponent(s). This game hasn’t moved from its top spot. My wife and I started making these lists a little over a year ago and this was my #1 then and will continue to stay there for at least the near future.

Well, there you have it, my top 10 favorite games as well as some honorable mentions between my last three posts. The next post in the series will be some games that I could see eventually moving onto my top 10 list. The reason that they aren’t there yet are that I just haven’t played them enough to really feel I can put them up there at this time. That being said, they are all really good games and I think at least one or two have a legitimate chance to move up the list. Thanks so much for reading and I hope you come back for the next post. Until next time, game on!