Top 10 New to Me Games of 2024

I’ve been writing this blog for almost 8 years now, doing a monthly “new to me” post for just as long (it started in April 2017, but it was about March’s games!), and I often do “best games played” of the year if I’m not already doing an all-time “best of” series of article.

But something hit me.

No, not that rotten apple you threw at me, and believe me, I saw that. You’re going to get detention at least, if not more.

It hit me that I have never actually done an annual “best new to me games” list, and maybe I should start doing that!

Especially now that I’m playing 60+ new to me games each year.

I know, right?

Welcome to the first annual edition of the “Top 10 New to Me Games” of the past year.

Let’s hope I remember to do this next year as well.

I played a lot of great new to me games last year, so many that it was kind of hard to rank them.

So thanks, Pubmeeple, for helping me out.

Believe it or not, even though I played three new Garphill games last year, none made the list!

Ok, one was 11th and one was 15th, but still…

The Cult of the New to Me is not very happy with me since all ten of these games are either 2023 or 2024 games, but that’s not my fault!

Funnily enough, I’ve actually written posts about all but two of them as well.

I played 68 new to me games last year, and these are the cream of the crop (for me, anyway).

10) Faraway (2023 – Catch Up Games)

Designers: Johannes Goupy, Corentin Lebrat

Artist: Maxime Morin

Players: 2-6

Faraway is that awesome tableau-building card game where the scoring is wonky but it really makes sense when you think about it.

It’s quick and easy to play, but hard to keep in mind that you have to plan your scoring cards and how they come out.

The sanctuaries can help with that, but it’s still a bit mind-bending.

But after one game, you get the hang of it. Maybe not to win, but to at least not embarrass yourself.

You can check out more in my review here!

9) Forest Shuffle (2023 – Lookout Games)

Designer: Kosch

Artists: Toni Llobet, Judit Piella

Players: 2-5

Another tableau-building card game, I love the “place cards on all four sides of a tree” mechanism. There are lots of avenues to get points, but you have to go big into a couple of them. If you get too broad, then you’re not going to win.

And at the end you have this wonderful forest with lots of wildlife!

Unless you just produced trees, in which case it’s still beautiful, but you lost by a lot.

You can read more in my review here.

8) Harmonies (2024 – Libellud)

Designer: Johan Benvenuto

Artists: Maëva da Silva

Players: 1-4

I didn’t play Harmonies enough to review it, but my one play of it was enough to really impress me with this game that combines bits from Azul and from Cascadia to a whole that’s much more than the sum of its parts.

I love the pattern-building, even as it burns my brain some. I’m not great at patterns, but Harmonies isn’t that hard for me.

I don’t do well at it, but I’m ok.

And it’s so pretty to look at!

This game packs a huge punch into a small little board.

Sometimes too small, though that’s just me.

Check out my First Impressions post here.

I’ve played it on Boardgame Arena a few times since writing that, and I still really enjoy it.

7) Pirates of Maracaibo (2023 – Capstone Games)

Designers: Ralph Bienert, Ryan Hendrickson, Alexander Pfister

Artists: Christian Fiore, Odysseas Stamoglou

Players: 1-4

Pirates of Maracaibo is the first game that I didn’t write a post about, mainly because I wasn’t doing “First Impressions” back when I played it.

It’s also the only longer game that I actually have played twice at the same convention.

That’s saying something, right?

The game is kind of a race to get across the board, with three rounds.

However, it’s not just a race to get there. If you only do that, you will lose.

On the way, you’ll be stopping to raid, to collect cards for your ship, or maybe even improve your ship.

You’re also exploring an island, trying to explore as much of it as possible.

As with the best games, there are multiple ways to score points, but once again you need to concentrate a bit.

Maybe a little bit of exploring and lots of burying treasure? Or maybe building some mansions on the card grid?

This is a really cool game and I’m so glad that it’s come to Boardgame Arena now so I can keep playing it. I don’t know if anybody in my game group has the game and my collection is getting a bit saturated.

But I will definitely be playing this one again.

6) The Vale of Eternity (2023 – Mandoo Games)

Designer: Eric Hong

Artists: Jiahui Eva Gao, Gautier Maia, Stefano Martinuz, Erica Tormen, Jens Wiese

Players: 2-4

Another card game with chaining combos!

You’d think that was a thing for me or something.

In Vale of Eternity, you are summoning creatures to your tableau, hoping to chain together their effects to score a bucketload of points before the 10th round is over.

The artwork is beautiful, the card combinations are very cool (if limited, but I’m hoping the expansion helps with that), and I love the limitations that force you to really think about what you’re doing and why.

It’s not a brain-burner at all, but it does require some thought.

Check out my review for more reasons why I like this game.

5) Let’s Go! To Japan (2024 – Alderac)

Designer: Josh Wood

Artists: Chaykov, Kailene Falls, Toshiyuki Hara 原としゆき, Magdalena Pruckner, Erica Ward

Players: 1-4

Let’s Go! To Japan is one of the most thematic games I’ve played in quite a while.

If it wasn’t for the theme, I’m not sure how interested I would be in this, as it is otherwise kind of a typical card drafting, icon-matching game with a couple of interesting twists.

You are basically planning your six-day trip to Japan, doing three (maybe four if you planned well!) activities per day.

Drafting the activity cards is the main thing in the game, but as the game goes on and you have fewer places to play them, it gets a bit more difficult.

I do love the card combinations, but I really love the artwork and how interesting all of the cards are.

The game is best if you have the time for each player to narrate their trip, because that just brings the theme to life.

It’s still a fine game without that, but it loses something.

Find out more in my review.

Surprisingly, though, this was not the most thematic game on this list.

4) Great Western Trail: New Zealand (2023 – Eggertspiele)

Designer: Alexander Pfister

Artist: Chris Quilliams

Players: 1-4

This isn’t either, but it’s still an amazing game!

I’ve always enjoyed the Great Western Trail games, but I’ve had a lot of trouble parsing just how to do well in the base game.

I really enjoyed the Argentina entry, though, and it seemed to click a bit.

Now that I’ve played New Zealand, I’m not sure which of these last two is my favourite.

But I know they’re both up there!

In New Zealand, you are herding sheep to market instead of cows, and the game adds some interesting ship elements to the whole thing.

There are also additions like gold, and the whole bird track which will give you bonuses (and perhaps points) as you move up it.

The ship delivery locations are very cool and are a nice replacement for the train track in the original.

I also like how the employees you can hire have nothing to do with the timer of the game. They’re a completely separate mechanism.

This is a Great Western Trail game that I would love to play again.

3) Rock Hard 1977 (2024 – Devir)

Designer: Jackie Fox

Artist: Jennifer Giner

Players: 2-5

This is the most thematic game I played in 2024!

Rock Hard 1977 is almost literally dripping with theme (if, you now, theme was something that could actually drip).

It’s also a nice combination of worker placement mechanics, push your luck ,and some set collection as well.

This is a game that I would have liked even if the theme wasn’t so prevalent, but since the theme is just so engrossing, I really love playing it.

Laura Giner’s artwork really does bring out that theme too.

This is such a great game about becoming a rock star in the late 1970s.

I don’t know if I like it at 3 players and doubt I would at 2 players.

But as a 4-5 player game (5 is a bit long but still fun), this one hits all the great spots.

See my review of it here for more.

2) Civolution (2024 – Pegasus Spiele)

Designer: Stefan Feld

Artist: Dennis Lohausen

Players: 1-4

This ranking for Civolution is split between how fun the game is and how much potential fun (for me) I can see in future plays of it.

I really enjoyed the Heavy Cardboard playthrough.

I loved my first play of the game, but also felt frustrated because I was having trouble figuring out how best to play it.

There’s just so much!

This game really burns the brain with possibilities because there are just so many options out there.

Do you explore the map? Play a lot of cards? Concentrate on tracks?

I just don’t know!

The components are great, but it’s also a table hog.

I am so intrigued by this game and I want to play it again as soon as possible.

Hopefully my copy will be coming soon.

See my First Impressions post here for more thoughts on how dense this game is.

And how much it makes me salivate.

1) Shipyard: 2nd Edition (2023 – Delicious Games)

Designer: Vladimír Suchý

Artists: Michal Řezníček, Adela Stopka

Players: 1-4

Finally, my favourite new to me game from 2024, and it had to be Shipyard.

Ever since I fell in love with it watching the Heavy Cardboard playthrough, then buying it, putting it together (that was fun) and then getting it to the table three times inside of six weeks, I loved it more each time.

The game looks beautiful and there’s something to be said for how intricate the action system is.

You are ostensibly building ships in your shipyard, making sure you have the right crew, the right additions, and maybe even the right visitors, all in the interests of getting the most prestige each time you send a new ship out into the canal.

You can concentrate on building a bunch of little ships or one gigantic one, and it all works!

It’s not the most thematic. The artwork definitely carries the theme, but otherwise you are chaining actions and resources to build ships for points.

But it’s fitting for this game, as Shipyard is amazing.

Want to hear me gush about it more (or did you just want more detail about it)?

Check out my review.

And there you have it, and not that long of a post either considering there are 10 games here!

I can be brief when I want to be.

What do you think of these games?

Let me know in the comments.