It was a monster slug-a-thon (to borrow a phrase) between the top two contenders, but the winner of the Quarter To Three Best Board Game of the Last Five Years Award is…
The eldritch forces of the Arkham Horror Living Card Game tried their best to bring doom upon the seminal dungeon crawler campaign game, but let’s be honest–just look at the size of the boxes (nevermind price!) and you can tell who the heavyweight is here.
Hard to argue with either of these games as highly representative of the trends of the time, even though they both technically had their genesis just prior to the period in question. Games that tell long collaborative stories (especially with scads of expensive miniatures–pardon my editorializing) weren’t new in the last five years, but they did explode in recent years. They also provided rich solitaire experiences for us in lockdown.
That said, deep single-session Euro-inflected multiplayer games had a strong showing in the last five years and in the voting too: Spirit Island and Dune: Imperium brought an elegance to the midweight strategic genre without eroding replayability. And lighter games like Wingspan and Res Arcana no doubt stuck in voters’ minds for the reliability with which they could be called to the table.
Here’s the full Top Ten:
And here’s a link to the sheet with all the votes. Don’t miss the play-by-play tab to see how close Arkham Horror was to winning!
Thanks to @arrendek for the spreadsheet magic! And thanks to everyone for sharing their favorite games. I learned about several games thanks to this thread (and even snagged a used copy of Babylonia (Ranked #12) on my last trek to the game store, which wouldn’t have even been on my radar if it hadn’t come up here a couple times).