There are two clear contenders for the best board game of 2022
Many board game publishers make a tidy profit on upgraded components — things like metal coins and card sleeves that make their products more appealing at the table. But some companies are building entire games around these kinds of bits. Just look at the poker-style chips and custom dice that Chip Theory Games uses, or the neoprene game board at the center of Leder Games’ Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile. This year, yet another rare and expensive component has had its breakout moment: clear plastic playing cards.
These unusual transparent sheets feel just like regular playing cards. You can shuffle them and you can sleeve them, so they seamlessly integrate into decks with traditional cards. But they can also be printed on, allowing designers to layer art or to conceal certain game elements from view. Used in clever ways, clear cards offer players new mechanics and features that simply weren’t available in board games before. Two of the year’s best games — John D. Clair’s Dead Reckoning and Corey Konieczka’s 3,000 Scoundrels— put them to use in their own creative ways.
Dead Reckoning is a sandbox-style game of exploration and conflict on the high seas. Each player at the table has a crew of sailors to man their ship. That crew can be upgraded over time, giving players a stronger sense of ownership. Clair uses one clear plastic card for each of these crew members — for the bosun, the first mate, the deck hand, and so on.
The art on these transparent cards only takes up the top half of one side. Each is then paired with an identically sized traditional card and a matching card sleeve. As players upgrade their crew, they simply remove the traditional playing card from the sleeve and either rotate it or flip it around,
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