We played
dozens of new
board games
this year to
find the five
best.Wingspan was another early
2019 debut that started the year
off strong. It’s easy to teach to
new players, and I love the room
for discovery and creating new,
winning strategies. With more
than 160 unique birds, it feels like
there are countless avian engines
that will lead you to victory.
3 / PAX PAMIR, SECOND
EDITION: BEST FOR HISTORY
BUFFS $ 85
It’s 19th-century Afghanistan.
From the ashes of the Durrani
Empire, you’re fighting to form
a new reigning court of real-life
historical figures and forces. But
you are not alone. To win, you and
your friends will have to forge
and break alliances among three
coalitions: the interloping Rus-
sian and British empires and the
nativist Afghanis.
Pax Pamir is striking—and
not just because of the gor-
geous components and artwork.
Of the hundreds of games I’ve
played, I’ve never experienced
anything like Pax Pamir. It’s a
wargame where none of the sol-
diers are yours. You’re free to
switch alliances at every turn,
and it requires tons of strategic
ingenuity. I love how cunning it
feels when you deftly navigate
among the three coalitions, like
marching your British soldiers
out of Herat before swapping
over to the side of the incoming
Russian Empire. It’s delightfully
insidious.
4 / TINY TOWNS: BEST FOR
FAMILIES $4 0
Tiny Towns is a simple strategy
game with just a handful of rules.
Players take turns calling out
resources—cubes of wood, wheat,
brick, glass, or stone—for every-
one to place within their personal
4x4 grid of a town. Once you’ve got
the right resources in the right
shape, you’ll replace the little col-
ored cubes with buildings and
then spend the rest of the game
working around your increasingly
congested hamlet.
Tiny Towns is also great for
families (with kids at least 12
years old), but the game rewards
geometric foresight and strat-
egy that makes it a total blast for
adults as well.5 / RES ARCANA: MOST GAME FOR
THE LEAST AMOUNT OF TIME $4 0
Here’s a fantastically dense strat-
egy game that you can pull out,
play, and pack up in as little as
30 minutes. In Res Arcana, you
and your friends take on the rolesof various practitioners of the
occult and alchemical arts. With
hands of complex but easy-to-
understand cards, you’ll weave
magic, monsters, and machinery
together in clever combinations
to rapidly increase your stock of
magical essences. By spending
those essences, you’ll take con-
trol of magical realms that will
quickly win you the game.
It’s no surprise that a game
about alchemy has found a way
to transmute heaping mounds of
strategy into such a compact and
speedy game. I especially love
how Res Arcana’s b r e v i t y c r e -
ates a level of unshakable tension
that’s easy to love. Each turn feels
important, and each decision feels
potentially game-ending.4
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