The 5 Most Interesting Games I Played In 2020

The Games

2020 is done and gone. It was a weird, confusing year. A year most of us will not look back on fondly. If I must look back at something, why not look at the new games that I thought were above the cut, that graced my table and managed to entice me to bring them out time and time again. Most were not new releases, but titles that I missed out on the first time around.

So here are 5 games I found interesting, some that maybe you should think about playing on your own table in this new year.

5. Formosa Tea

Soso Games / Tasty Minstrel Games

Box Art

Formosa Tea came out in 2019, with little fanfare and much less media coverage. It’s a shame, in this lovely green hued box about Taiwanese tea production, Formosa Tea delivers a fairly intricate worker placement game. In here, you’ll be collecting three types of tea in an effort to produce varied qualities of chai. The real kicker here, though, is the pushing mechanic that triggers when placing workers on specific spots on the board. As more and more players interact with the board, crowding spaces, limiting resources, and pushing your or other workers forward activating actions as they get that extra bump on tracks, you’ll see people consider where and whom it helps when placing any worker down. Towards the end game, even a single placement is crucial…and it’s decidedly climactic when a bad placement by an opponent benefits you the most.

Not the broadest in scope, huge point salad this is not, but what is in focus here—push mechanics, set collection, resource gathering and a few other things to boost scoring—manages to blend well. I wholeheartedly love this game, and I wish to play it more.

4. Crown of Emara

Pegasus Spiel

Box Art

The double rondel. What a neat concept! In Crown of Emara you’ll be tackling not one, but two rondels, extracting resources from one side to utilize on the other for points. The interesting part here is the way you move about these rondels. Each player has nine action cards and a player board with a set number of movement options (1,2, or 3). Place an action card under the movement option of your choice and move your worker that many spaces in one of the two rondels. Once you use up your nine cards, pick them up, shuffle them about, and do it again one last time. If you counted right, you’ll see only 18 turns exist in a game of Emara.

It’s tight.

You’ll never have enough turns to do what you want, often leaving points on the board by the end of the game. It’s also infuriatingly heady, at times. If you like games where you have to look ahead in your mind to squeeze the best possible move out of every action, this game will have you in knots. Added bonus that you can have a game of four players in under 90 minutes. Extra bonus that the solo mode is good, too. I really enjoy this one, and a welcomed surprise.

3. Empires of the North: Roman Banners Expansion

Portal Games

Roman Banners Expansion Box Art

If you know me by now, you’ll know I adore Empires of the North. The base game is great, but Portal Games came out with not one, not two, but three expansions for it. Out of the three, I can safely say that Roman Banners is the best of the lot. With a new faction into the mix, you’ll be able to play as one of two clans: Flavian and Trajana.

New mechanisms, cute art, and new Islands to beef up your stock, Roman Banners is the most balanced of the three expansions, as you can play them both solo and in multiplayer games, and I think it has enough mental gymnastics to challenge players in satisfying ways.

2. Ganymede

Sorry We Are French / Lucky Duck Games

Box Art

Cool art? Check. Nifty little meeples? Check. A hidden gem? Yup…at least in my humble opinion. I think Ganymede is the better Splendor. Just a tad more robust in its decision space, and accessible enough for newcomers, Ganymede might be an underrated game that flew under the radar for most people in the hobby. Released in 2018, this is a set collection, combo triggering game where you are tasked to move along workers to their destination in Jupiter’s largest moon, Ganymede.

However, its difficulty lies in how to best manage to move these said workers depending on the requirements of the shuttle cards. These shuttle cards require certain colored meeples in order to shuffle these workers along the next step of the journey to Ganymede. A shuttle card might need one blue and red meeple, but you only have yellow and purple? Fear not, as there are different ways to move along a worker by utilizing the game’s various actions of converting workers to different colors, moving a single worker without the need of a shuttle card, and many other ways to trigger combos that allow for extra actions that help you move along those workers.

It’s oh so satisfying when a chain of cards can be used to trigger a combo that goes super nova allowing for a huge amount of bonus actions on your turn. If you’re clever enough to do it, you can turn a game on its head, or reward you by pushing you ahead of the competition. Really like this one and it’s probably going to be my “next step” of games to play when I want to further introduce someone to the hobby after a game of Carcassonne or Catan.

1. Teotihuacan

Board & Dice

Box Art

I played lots of games in 2020 (what else were we going to do?), but the clear standout of the bunch is Teotihuacan. It’s monumental. I love this game and it’s creeping up my in my Top 10 games of all time. Once you grock it, you muddle through the first play making countless rule mistakes, and you decipher its intended cleverness, you’ll want to play it all the time. As I did.

It is a beast to learn, and then an even bigger monster to muster an understanding of how to best cultivate a winning strategy. It’s rewarding, too, when said strategy starts to bear fruit…but don’t get too comfortable, since the game is also highly variable, thus you’ll need to come up with a strategy anew. In other words, it’s a slightly new experience every game, but one that builds upon previous encounters that allow you to experiment with new strategies. I like that. It keeps this one fresh much longer than other games. I haven’t gotten tired of it, and with current and new expansions in the horizon, you can have even more of Teotihuacan.

It’s my most interesting game of the year, and one that I will probably play for a long, long time.