2023: The Year of Discovering Old Favorites

boardgamequest.com:

This year has been a weird one. Somehow it’s halfway over and yet, there hasn’t been a lot that’s come across our collective radars when it comes to favorite games released this year. We were prepping to do our annual list of “The Best Board Games of 2023… So Far,” but we struggled to come up with stand-out titles. Convention season is starting to kick into gear, so I’m sure that’ll change by the end of the year. But for now, we settled on something not so new. Whether that was an older release played for the first time or one that’s stood the twin tests of collection culls and time, here’s our Quest List for 2023 so far: the year of discovering old favorites.

Chosen by JasonI think there’s probably a false assumption out there that if you review board games, you’ve played everything, or at least close to it. Lemme clear that up: we haven’t. Busy lives and all that. I’ve been thankful to have access to digital board games, which is where I was first asked to learn and play The Castles of Burgundy. I’m not gonna lie: it wasn’t my first pick. It’s ugly and looks drier than the desert where Chris lives. But I gave it the old college try, and I didn’t hate it. In fact, I kind of liked it. So much so, I’ve played it 12 times, just this year. For perspective, there are only nine games out of the 275 or so I’ve played that break ten plays. There are so many reasons this game shouldn’t have clicked for me, but it did in a satisfying way. I love the combos that you can pull off and that I don’t have to plan three turns ahead to win. Although I am probably the slowest player on staff when we play online. I don’t plan on buying the overly extravagant Awaken Realms copy coming soon. I’ll probably stick with digital for now. But