Deeply strategic games especially appealing to experienced players. Often employ a myriad of game mechanisms and lean towards longer play times.
2020

Winner – The Taverns of Tiefenthal

Place your dice and build up your tavern before guests arrive in this deckbuilding and dice-rolling modular pub creation and management game.

Recommended

Barrage
Come into your own hydroelectric power by managing your Construction wheel and water flow in this good dam game.

Pax Pamir
Create your own coalitions and vie for Dominance in this tableau-building game of leaders and empires.

Nominated

Pipeline

Cthulhu: Death May Die
2019

Winner – Root

Wielding multi-use cards, players battle it out for the future of the forest in this asymmetrical game of war, adventure, and general anti-cat sentiment.

Recommended

Teotihuacan: City of Gods
Head to the past and help construct the Pyramid of the Sun in this complex worker placement game.

Gùgōng
Work to develop your influence in China’s past in a worker placement game of gifts, favor, decrees, and intrigue.

Nominated

Betrayal Legacy

Brass: Birmingham